


Frozen Leap

by moriturus



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Discord: Elsanna Shenanigans (Disney), F/F, Incest, Inspired by The Time Traveler's Wife, Quantum Leaping (Quantum Leap), Quantum Mechanics, Sibling Incest, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 50,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27142186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moriturus/pseuds/moriturus
Summary: Elsa has lost the only person in her life she cares about, her sister Anna. She will stretch the laws of space and time to save her. [COMPLETE]
Relationships: Anna/Elsa (Disney)
Comments: 137
Kudos: 165
Collections: 5 stars





	1. Prologue

# Prologue

_Eagle Valley, Indiana, 2002_

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to honor the life of…” the dour, grey-haired priest looked at the small card nestled in the Bible he held, “…Anna Beckett, and to express our love and admiration for her.”

Elsa clung to her mother’s arm, tears freely flowing down her face. Iduna, dressed identically to Elsa in a long, flowing black dress, reached an arm around Elsa’s shoulder to hug her close.

“It is only natural that we be sad today, because Anna has left us, but we must rejoice as well, for she is surely with our Father, the Lord in Heaven. Today is also a day for memories, for us to share time with each other, to remember,” the priest coughed, “Anna and pay your last respects, to say a sad and fond farewell to a beautiful young lady we were all so privileged to have known and loved.”

The casket, a sleek black wooden monolith, was perched over the freshly dug grave, small sunflowers lining the edge. _Anna always loved sunflowers, even at her most troubled_ , Elsa thought to herself. As the priest droned on, quoting verse after verse of the Bible, Elsa closed her eyes, bewildered at how this day happened.

Memories of Anna flashed through her mind. Anna crying as a child, saying she felt like the spare kid and never saw her sister. Anna struggling, shattered as her report card told her she was a failure. Anna, caught out too late one night drinking and partying when she was only 15 years old. Anna and Hans, first dating, then doing drugs together. Elsa knew this day would come, but had fervently hoped it would have been much further in the future.

 _I’m so sorry, Anna. I failed you. I tried, and I failed. I wish I could have saved you from this, from all of this,_ she whispered in her mind, fresh tears falling from her eyes as she wrung her hands together, covered by black silk gloves.. The sound of shovels scraping dirt and rock snapped her attention back to the present.

“Mr. and Mrs. Beckett?” one of the attendees addressed the parents. Elsa’s father, Agnar, spoke up.

“Yes, Miss…?”

“Dunfeld, Yelana Dunfeld. I was one of Anna’s teachers. I’m so very sorry for your loss. Anna was a good girl in her heart, and that drunk driver stole her away from all of us, you most of all,” the elderly, grey-haired woman said, holding Agnar and Iduna’s hands.

“Thank you, Miss Dunfeld,” said Iduna, through misty eyes. “I remember you from both Anna and Elsa’s parent teacher conferences some time ago.”

“If there’s any way I can be of help to you - especially you, Elsa, please don’t hesitate to ask.” The teacher patted Elsa on the shoulder and wandered off as the last of the dirt was placed with care on the grave, the marble headstone still pristine.

Elsa stood frozen to the ground, staring at the grave marker as her parents spoke with the rest of the family attending. Rage, horror, despair, and longing boiled inside her heart as she stared at the covered grave and the granite headstone, her sister’s name carved with soulless mechanical precision into the rock.

_I wish I could have saved you, Anna. I love you._

* * *

## Author’s Notes

This is the first part in a multi-chapter story involving copious amounts of time travel. It’s a blend of Quantum Leap and the Time Traveler’s Wife, both excellent source material. Updates will be significantly slower than my previous work, Storm of Spirits; expect them approximately once every two weeks or so. It will start off Snow Sisters and transition to Elsanna probably around the middle third of the story, so expect a very slow burn.

* * *

### Join The Party

Enjoyed this story? Want to meet fellow readers and discuss? Join the Elsanna Shenanigans community on Discord at discord.com/TU9NpnH (copy and paste that URL)

As always, please review, kudos, comment, like, follow, all that good stuff. I appreciate it.


	2. The Leap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We get to the present day and Elsa takes a giant leap.

# Episode 1: The Leap

_Groom Lake, Nevada, 2022_

Colonel Kristoff Calavicci raced across the sandy plains of Groom Lake, Nevada in his dusty blue Ford F-150. He nervously chewed on a toothpick hanging from his lip, driving as fast as the poor truck could go across the massive air base, listening to the voices shouting from his smartphone. A few moments ago, his lead scientist and consultant, Doctor Elsa Beckett, had shown up unexpectedly at the Project Q lab and started unauthorized use of their experimental equipment.

“Doctor Beckett! DOCTOR BECKETT! It’s not safe! You have to shut down the quantum oscillator!” screamed Kai Gushman in the background, one of the lead scientists on Project Q.

“Colonel Calavicci! Doctor Beckett has activated the quantum oscillator, but it’s not ready!” shouted Dr. Gerda Beeks, the chief medical officer on Project Q, over the din of a massive machine powering up. “The system hasn’t been calibrated! There’s no telling what will happen- oh my god, she’s stepping into oscillation chamber!”

“Doctor! Get out of there! The oscillator’s photonic cannon will kill you!” Gushman hoarsely cried.

Kristoff took one hand off the wheel to pick up the phone. “Tell Gooshie to shut it down, Gerda!”

“We can’t! Once the accelerator is engaged, we can’t stop the reaction or it could blow this whole facility to the moon!” Gushman yelled. “Whatever it was set to, that’s what’s going to happen now!”

“How much danger are we in?” asked Kristoff, briefly contemplating whether he should be driving away from the facility instead of towards it. He hadn’t worked this hard for his whole career to be vaporized in an instant.

“Let me check… the photonic cannon is- that doesn’t make any sense! She’s calibrated the photonic gun to aim inwards instead of down the test range. I don’t understand- it’s like she’s… she’s… holy shit, she’s going to shoot it at herself!” Gushman panicked.

“I’ll be there in thirty seconds. Do what you can to talk her down, Gooshie!” Kristoff willed the truck to go faster. The engine temperature gauge crept into the red. Empty beer cans in the passenger footwell rattled ominously.

Project Q was a DARPA research project to build a quantum superposition device that could dematerialize a piece of matter and rematerialize it elsewhere by forcing it into a superposition state, but out of phase with the regular world for a specified period of time. Once the appropriate time had lapsed, it would rephase into the world in a different location, making it the perfect weapon for delivering ordnance payloads without bomber jets, tanks, or soldiers.

Kristoff sighed, thinking back to the proposal his commander, Doctor Duke Weselton, had made to the DARPA Director. A weapon with no perceivable launch mechanism would be the ultimate stealth weapon. They could materialize a bomb inside a rebel stronghold or even an enemy nation’s top-secret facilities. They could, perhaps, one day materialize a soldier to force an enemy leader to surrender at gunpoint, having the soldier magically appear in the leader’s home, past all the bodyguards.

DARPA had enthusiastically approved the project, and they were given funding and an express timeline to build a proof of concept. There was only one snag: no one had any idea how to actually build this thing. Weselton had read about quantum superposition in some science journal but had no experience or true expertise in the field whatsoever, and simply made the pitch with no concept of how to make it happen, leaving the mess in Kristoff’s lap.

The project seemed like a lost cause until two years ago, when an eccentric, previously unknown forty-year old physicist named Elsa Beckett published an academic paper demonstrating superposition of a large molecule in her lab at the University of Oslo. Kristoff took immediate note of Beckett’s research, verified her credentials, and offered her a position at DARPA immediately at three times the pay she was making. She’d thought about it for far longer than most rational people would, but eventually he’d persuaded her to come aboard.

After that, the project grew by leaps and bounds. Project Q went from a fanciful daydream to a working prototype in 18 months, demonstrating a superposition of a macro particle at limits never before tested. Dr. Beckett was incredibly driven, working crazy hours. Kristoff didn’t fully understand her motivations despite getting to know her reasonably well, but he hadn’t cared up until now - the project was ahead of schedule and under budget, and he looked like a rockstar to the DARPA brass.

Until now.

* * *

Kristoff raced into the lab’s antechamber, quickly pulled a pair of safety goggles over his greying blond hair, and barreled down the hallway to the quantum oscillator’s observation room. Blinding white and blue light poured from the room and his hair stood on end from the sheer magnitude of power being used by the equipment. He felt like he was standing in a corn field as a lightning storm passed overhead, ready to be struck down by lightning at any second.

“Gooshie! Report!” he shouted over the din of the machinery. A silver ring of metal revolved rapidly around a platform in the middle of the mirrored circular room, bolts of blue electricity sparking from the walls. In the middle of the platform, dressed in a form-hugging white bodysuit, stood Dr. Beckett, her eyes closed, arms outstretched as though she were communing with the great machine somehow.

“The particle accelerator is at 92% power, Colonel! It’ll reach 100% power within 60 seconds, and when it does, the photonic cannon will fire into the oscillator ring,” Gushman shouted, his portly body shaking from the effort.

“And there’s nothing we can do?” Kristoff asked.

“No sir! If we attempt to interfere in any way, in the best case scenario, we all die. In the worst case scenario, there’s a massive new crater as a tourist attraction - the former state of Nevada.”

Kristoff’s eyes bulged at the thought. Fear and anger warred inside him, holding him in place. He wasn’t sure whether to run into the chamber and rescue Dr. Beckett or run for the door and drive as quickly as he could, so he did neither. “What’s going to happen to Doctor Beckett, Gooshie?”

Kai shook his head wordlessly.

 _Shit_ , thought Kristoff. He pushed the intercom button on the control panel with a squawk. “Doctor Beckett! What are you doing- why are you doing this? You’re going to kill yourself!”

Elsa opened her eyes, her arms outstreched over her head, pulling the bodysuit taut. Blue lightning surrounded her body, and an unseen wind blew her white blonde hair upwards. She looked at the observation room with the scientists pressed up against the glass and smiled, shouting one word.

“Anna.”

A flash of blue light surged from the oscillator coil, blinding everyone.

Once the shock wore off, Kristoff caught his bearings and looked into the oscillator. Dr. Beckett was… gone. Her white bodysuit lay puddled on the floor.

“Where- where’d she go, Gooshie?”

Kai stared at the chamber, dazed. “I- I’m not- uh, Colonel, I am afraid I have no idea what’s just happened. The… the photonic cannon should have incinerated her entirely. But that’s clearly not the case because her clothing is there.” Gushman pulled out a complicated electrical instrument that looked like an iPad taped to a tuning fork.

“What? What is it?” Kristoff sighed, huffing loudly.

“According to these readings… she may have succeeded in our experiment, Colonel,” Kai gestured excitedly, lost in the moment.

“Succeeded how, Gooshie?”

“She may have sent herself entirely out of phase with our reality! This is… this is astonishing! To send an entire living creature into superposition! The first pilot experiments showed promise, of course, but this-”

“Gooshie! English, please. Where. Is. Doctor. Beckett.” He dragged his hands down his face, contemplating what he was going to tell DARPA.

“I don’t know, Colonel. But wherever she went, she is very possibly alive. There’s enough of a quantum trace in the oscillation chamber that we may be able to locate her, if we work quickly before the particles decay. She might even still be in this room with us, just invisible, out of phase with-”

Kristoff nodded impatiently and interrupted Gushman’s pontifications. “Find her. Get to work.”

* * *

## Author’s Notes

I wanted to get the first actual chapter out so that you weren’t left with just a mysterious prologue for two weeks. I’ve currently got 18 chapters mapped out and 5 fully written, so we’re making good progress. I’ll say up front that my knowledge of quantum physics is layperson level at best. I’m taking a LOT of liberties with it, so if you happen to be a Ph.D. in physics with a specialization in quantum mechanics, please accept my apologies in advance for likely completely butchering your chosen vocation.

And if you do have a specialization in quantum mechanics, the original Quantum Leap was based off CTCs and the Lorentzian manifolds, but ignored the Novikov self consistency principle (as we saw by substantial alterations to the past). This fic is going with the many worlds interpretation (all realities exist) instead, because it’s easier to resolve and means glaring errors in my writing can be hand-waved away more easily :D :D :D

* * *

### Join The Party

Enjoyed this story? Want to meet fellow readers and discuss? Join the Elsanna Shenanigans community on Discord at discord.gg/TU9NpnH (copy and paste that URL)

As always, please review, kudos, comment, like, follow, all that good stuff. I appreciate it.


	3. Total Eclipse of the Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsa leaps back in time to a critical moment in Anna's life: her birth.

# Episode 2: Total Eclipse of the Heart

 _Bloomington, Indiana, 1983_ _Elsa is 42 and 3, Anna is soon-to-be-born_

In a blistering flash of blue lightning, Elsa Beckett fell to her hands and knees on what felt like a linoleum floor. The shock and pain wore off quickly; she took inventory of her situation and realized, from the smell in the air alone, she had landed in a medical facility somewhere by the smell. Wherever she was, it was nearly dark. She stood cautiously and ran her fingers over her body, checking for injury, when she noticed she was…

Stark naked.

Light from under the door of whatever room she was in bled onto the floor, dim outlines beginning to appear. She was in some kind of closet. A few seconds of fumbling around, and she found the light switch on the wall. _Definitely a hospital_ , she thought. She found a pile of neatly folded green scrubs with IUBH printed on them and put them on quickly; she’d worry about the lack of undergarments later. A rack of empty, blank name tags sat next to the pile of scrubs; Elsa smirked and grabbed one and pinned it on her scrubs.

Elsa listened for a moment, then carefully opened the door into the hallway. The sounds of daily bustle in a hospital invaded her ears; the quantum oscillator’s energy left her every sense buzzing. Every hospital in the world tended to look alike; sterile white walls, white floors, white ceilings… made getting one’s bearings more difficult. She looked around; the door immediately to her right was labeled Examination Room 4.

 _English_ , she thought with relief. _I’m somewhere in the English-speaking world_. She looked around a bit more and saw IUBH written on a few more labels, and a memory sparked. IUBH was the name of the hospital near where she grew up, in Eagle Valley, Indiana. IUBH would have been Indiana University’s Bloomington Hospital… the place Anna was born. She had a sense of the incredible distance she’d traveled, at least.

The thought of Anna flooded Elsa with mixed emotions and a torrent of memories. They’d grown up in Indiana for a few years until their father got transferred to suburban New Jersey. After Anna’s death, she lost herself in her studies and left New Jersey - it was too painful to remain - to study quantum physics first at Cambridge University, then the University of Oslo. Calling Elsa a genius would have been an understatement; in addition to being a child prodigy, she held seven doctoral degrees in quantum physics, archaeology, ancient languages, chemistry, astronomy, medicine, and music, most of which she achieved to push away the pain of her sister’s untimely passing.

As she walked by a metal cart, she picked up a stethescope and clipboard, visually appearing like the doctor she was, rather than an orderly or nurse. Elsa needed a moment to think, and returning to the supply closet would look suspicious, so she ducked into Examination Room 5, which was dark.

Dark, but not empty. A woman lay reclined in the bed, obviously very pregnant. She was drowsy, but not sleeping. “Doctor?” she asked faintly.

Elsa cleared her throat and swiftly picked up the chart at the end of the bed to hide her face while she composed herself, wishing the room had been empty. Elsa clicked on a small reading light on the wall and began to read. She momentarily started at the date written on top of the clipboard - June 21, 1983. She didn’t just travel through space, she’d successfully traveled through time as well.

Hiding her smile at the experiment’s success, she resumed reading the patient history.

Female, 24 years old, high-risk pregnancy due to high blood pressure. Elsa shook her head. The patient was currently taking beta blockers, which would have been the appropriate treatment at the time, but would later be discovered to be too risky for pregnancy. This woman’s child was at elevated risk of birth complications. According to the chart, she was 38 weeks pregnant - almost there.

She looked up from the clipboard and nearly dropped it. There in the bed was her mother, Iduna Beckett. She hadn’t noticed her face in the darkness. Iduna looked far younger than when Elsa last saw her; more definitive evidence she had traveled in time as well as space.

“Doctor, I don’t feel so well all of the sudden. My back is killing me and the baby’s not moving around as much - I’m worried.”

Elsa leaned over with a stethescope, and heard a slower than expected heartbeat, probably 100 beats per minute by her estimate. She quickly took Iduna’s pulse as well. Easily 130 beats per minute. Worry flooded her mind as a dozen different possibilities surged from her memory. She stood up, leaned her head out the door, and flagged down a nurse. “Nurse, we need an ultrasound imaging machine in here, stat,” she squinted at the name tag, “Nurse Roberts.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor…?”

“Doctor-” Elsa paused, considering the ramifications of where she was. “Arendelle.”

“I’m sorry Doctor Arendelle, I don’t know what that is,” the nurse apologized. “Do you know what it looks like, I can see if someone else might know where to find one.”

Elsa silently fumed for a moment, then remembered where - and when - she was. Anna, her little sister, was about to be born. Ultrasound machines were not yet common in hospitals back in 1983, and wouldn’t be for another decade at least.

Elsa wracked her brain. Anna has always had issues even as a child, from academic problems to the friends she kept… over the years since her death, Elsa had wondered what might have happened that could have contributed to the problems her sister had. Now, she had a front row seat at what might be the start of them.

Slowed fetus movement. Patient feeling ill with acute back pain. Pale, clammy skin and signs of shock. Fast heart rate in the mother, slow in the fetus. All the signs pointed to placental abruption - the placenta becoming detached from the uterine wall with substantial internal bleeding. Depending on the severity, the mother could bleed out and the fetus could incur irreparable brain damage. Where the hell was Iduna’s actual doctor?

She turned and snapped just as the nurse re-entered the room. “Nurse Roberts! I need a pitocin drip immediately, 10mL solution in a liter of Ringers Lactate. This woman is having what is likely a Class 2 placental abruption and needs to be induced immediately.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Nurse Roberts said, hurrying back out of the room. Elsa quickly grabbed one of the permanent markers off the end of the bed and scribbled ARENDELLE on the blank name badge attached to her uniform. Elsa knew from her psychology doctorate that the representative heuristic effect would let her blend in perfectly; with her medical degree, the hospital attire, and her natural poise, no one would question whether she was a doctor or not. Nurse Roberts certainly didn’t.

Iduna looked up, eyes tired and drawn. “Doctor… what’s happening?”

“Mrs. Beckett, I suspect that you may have what’s called a placental abruption. The baby inside you has come partially detached from the wall of your uterus. The good news is that I think this is relatively sudden and recent, so as long as we get the baby out, both of you are likely to be fine.”

“Th- thank you. I don’t recognize you, Doctor, but you look familiar. Who are you?”

“I’m Doctor Arendelle. I’m on the night shift. Don’t worry, your regular doctor should be here shortly. We just need to get this process started to ensure everyone is healthy,” she said in her best professionally-soothing voice, offering a small smile to her mother.

“Thank you, Doctor Arendelle. That’s a pretty name. Do you know… is my husband outside?” Iduna’s eyes turned towards the door.

“I didn’t see him on the way in, but I’m sure we can have someone locate him, Mrs. Beckett. For now, you should relax as best as you can…” Elsa said as she watched the nurse set up the IV drip, “… and you might want to think about the baby’s name if you haven’t already.”

“We were discussing Rita, after Agnar’s - my husband’s- mother.”

Elsa reflexively wrinkled her nose. _Rita_? She restrained herself from giggling. “That’s… a name you don’t hear very often.”

“I know. I haven’t told him yet, but I was leaning more towards my mother’s name, just between us. Anna.” Iduna grinned.

Elsa nodded. “That’s is a very nice name,” she said, sighing wistfully. “Perhaps you can convince your husband.”

Iduna smiled. “He generally does see things my way,” she chuckled.

A gentle knock sounded on the doorframe. Nurse Roberts accompanied Agnar Beckett to the room. Elsa turned and masked her surprise at seeing her father, dressed in a faded brown polo shirt and slacks. _He looks so young! They both do!_ Next to Agnar…

… was a little girl with silver-blonde hair tied in a small French braid, wearing a dark blue sweater and a hair band to control her unruly bangs. Elsa stared in momentary shock at herself, a little three-year old girl who clung to her father’s leg, shyly waving while holding a small, white stuffed animal.

She recovered her senses and approached Agnar, hand outstretched. “Mr. Beckett? I’m Doctor Arendelle, one of the night shift doctors. Your wife has a complication known as a placental abruption, but we think it’s still early and we’re inducing labor now to see that both she and the baby are as healthy as can be. That said, you may want to talk with her, because once labor starts, the opportunities for conversation may be somewhat limited.”

Agnar smiled wanly and walked over to the bed, taking Iduna’s hand in his. His wife looked up at him with soft brown eyes that darted back and forth between husband and child. Little Elsa stood at the end of the bed, looking up, looking lost.

Elsa saw Iduna’s worried glances and broke the silence. “If you like, I can watch your little girl right outside the doorway here so you can speak privately,” she spoke softly to the couple. Both Agnar and Iduna nodded wordlessly. Elsa took the little girl’s hand and knelt down. “Hi! I’m Doctor Arendelle. What’s your name?”

The little girl turned her head and giggled, a small hand covering her mouth. “Elsa. My name is Elsa,” she said shyly, toying with the small braid in her hair.

“Well, Elsa, that’s a pretty name. Your parents need to have a little talk with each other, so let’s wait outside the door for them, okay? We won’t go far.” Elsa didn’t wait for confirmation as she gently led her smaller self out of the room.

Once outside the room, the pair sat down on a simple wooden bench. Little Elsa rubbed her fingers on the fringe of her skirt, a worried frown on her face. “Is Mommy okay?”

Elsa nodded. “Your mommy is getting ready to give birth to your baby sister. What do you think about that?”

“Will she come out in an egg like a snake?”

Elsa snorted, barely able to contain her laughter. “No, Elsa. Your new sister will not come out in an egg. She’ll be a little baby person.” Elsa smiled and her heart skipped, looking at her younger self, so innocent and eager. “Who’s this?” Elsa asked as she gestured to the stuffed animal, knowing the answer.

Little Elsa held up the small stuffed animal, a little white snowman. “This is Olaf. He likes warm hugs,” she announced proudly. “When my sister comes, I’m going to give her Olaf so that she is never alone.”

Elsa teared up. “That’s very sweet of you. It’s a wonderful thing, to want to take care of your little sister. I hope you feel that way your whole life.”

“I will. Your hair is pretty. It looks like mine,” the child admired.

“Thank you. Yours is very pretty too. It looks like…” A painful memory stirred from her youth, a phrase Anna said once when they were children, young and care-free. “Sunlight made into hair, someone once told me.”

The pair sat in companionable silence for a few moments, quietly lost in their thoughts.

Little Elsa turned her face up to her older self, her round cheeks glowing as she absentmindedly rubbed Olaf’s threadbare belly. “Can you love someone you’ve never met? Because I love my sister so much but I haven’t met her yet.”

“Yes. Yes you can, and you will love her so much more when you meet her,” Elsa murmured, giving her younger self a hug as she choked back her tears. She hadn’t remembered how she felt as a little child, but hearing her younger self speak triggered her memories and love for Anna. She hugged her smaller self, offering comfort to her for what could have been seconds or hours.

Nurse Roberts walked up to her cautiously some time later, not wanting to interrupt. “Doctor? Mrs. Beckett’s doctor will be here shortly, and thanked you for starting the induction. He’d like to meet with you before we move Mrs. Beckett to the delivery room.”

Elsa nodded. “Thank you, Nurse Roberts. I’ll be along momentarily.” Elsa stood and lurched, bracing herself against the wall. “I… I’m okay,” she said, addressing the concerned looks on both the nurse’s and the child’s faces. She took a deep breath and fidgeted, feeling a tingling up and down her back as though she had fallen asleep on it.

“Elsa, let’s get you back to your mother and father now,” she urged, taking the child by the hand and gently leading her back into the examination room. As she walked in, Iduna looked up and held her arms out to hug her daughter. Elsa almost impulsively ran forward, but caught herself as her miniature version sprang forward into her… their mother’s arms.

Agnar walked over to Elsa, and shook her hand once more. “Thank you, Doctor Arendelle. We’re very fortunate to have Iduna in such capable hands,” he said softly, his eyes warm with gratitude.

Elsa nodded mutely, struggling to reconcile this man with the memory of her stern father, always urging her to study harder, work harder, focus more. The tingling along her back was spreading rapidly; she felt as though her legs were filled with pins and needles. Pushing the sensation away, she looked at both of the parents. “You’ll be moved shortly to delivery, Mrs. Beckett, and from there the regular medical team will take over. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

Iduna nodded as a coy smile crept up on her lips. “Anna.”

“I’m sorry?” Elsa said, momentarily stunned at hearing her long-lost sister’s name on her mother’s lips so abruptly and out of the blue.

“I convinced him,” Iduna said, patting her husband’s hand, “to name the baby Anna.”

Agnar nodded in agreement, smiling as he looked lovingly at his wife. “It just seems to… fit. Like it was meant to be.”

“That’s an excellent choice,” Elsa grinned, fighting the urge to burst out laughing.

Nurse Roberts and another orderly came in to wheel Iduna’s bed into the delivery room. Elsa patted her mother on the shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile as Agnar and little Elsa made their way into the hallway and followed Iduna’s bed.

Elsa stumbled into the hallway, the prickling sensation growing worse. Glancing toward the supply closet, she made her way down the hall, her hand on the wall for support. She watched in alarm as blue sparks crawled over her flesh like electric ants.

With the last of her strength and focus, she opened the supply closet door and slipped inside, closing the door behind her, before she fell to her knees. Tiny blue sparks of light limned her body, and her last conscious thought was _they look a little like snowflakes_.

Elsa vanished, her uniform falling to the floor soundlessly.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

I’m writing a little faster than I expected, and this story has really taken on a life of its own, so I’ll publish one new chapter a week assuming I’ve got one done and ready to go.

Also, my notes from last week changed as I got a lot of writing done this week. We’re going with closed-timelike-curves and Novikov’s self-consistency principle as the quantum basis for what’s happening here. As I got into the weeds in later chapters, there’s literally no drama in the many-worlds interpretation.

For the non-nerds, don’t worry - the science won’t get in the way of the story. You’ll see a pattern soon - past, present, past, present in alternating chapters.

* * *

### Join The Party

Enjoyed this story? Want to meet fellow readers and discuss? Join the Elsanna Shenanigans community on Discord at discord.gg/TU9NpnH (copy and paste that URL)

As always, please review, kudos, comment, like, follow, all that good stuff. I appreciate it.


	4. Back in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Was the leap to the past real or a figment of Elsa's imagination?

# Episode 3: Back in Time

_Groom Lake, Nevada, 2022_

“Elsa! You’re okay!” shouted Kristoff, running into the quantum oscillator before skidding to a halt and putting his hands up over his eyes. “Ahhh nope, sorry, I didn’t expect you coming back without clothes.” He looked around fruitlessly for something - anything - to help cover the missing scientist’s naked body.

Elsa knelt on the floor of the oscillation chamber, skin flickering with small blue sparks, her head bowed and eyes closed. “What… where am I?” She opened her eyes and her shoulders sagged in relief, recognizing the laboratory and her own time.

Doctor Beeks ran into the chamber with a laboratory coat, draping it over Elsa to give her a little decency. “Doctor Beckett, thank god you’ve returned unharmed! We were all so worried about you.”

“How- how long was I gone, Gerda? Kai?” She turned her head towards Kai, standing in the observation room, staring intently at the instrument panels and pushing buttons in a frenzy.

Gushman’s voice echoed over the loudspeakers. “Approximately 5 minutes, Doctor Beckett! This is astounding, simply ama-”

Kristoff sharply waved his hand at the operator window, shushing Kai.

“Five… five minutes? It can’t be… it was hours…” Elsa gasped, thoroughly confused. She knew what she’d experienced, where she had been. It had all been so real… hadn’t it?

Gerda finished checking over Elsa with her own instruments and gave a silent nod of approval to Kristoff. Whatever had happened to her, it hadn’t caused any overt harm.

Kristoff put a hand gently on Elsa’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you out of here and get a cup of coffee, and you can tell me what happened.”

* * *

“It felt so real,” Elsa sighed, staring down into the inky darkness of her paper coffee cup, the sterile white military base cafeteria empty. “I swear, I was back in Indiana, right at the moment Anna was going to be born. I saw my mother and father - I saw my mother in labor!”

Kristoff shook his head, aimlessly nudging his own cup in small circles on the metal table. “Elsa, that’s impossible. You were only gone for a few minutes at most. Maybe… I don’t know, maybe you were in some kind of dream state, or a trance, or something. Gooshie says the tests are still inconclusive about where you went, but the past…?”

Kristoff ran a hand through his thinning sandy blond hair. In the past two years, he and Elsa Beckett had gone from total strangers to close friends. Initially, they’d butted heads fiercely, the scientist insisting on doing everything her way and providing minimal information about what exactly she was building beyond the specifications agreed in her contract.

After one particularly difficult day early on, Kristoff had brought her a mug of hot chocolate as a peace offering. She’d been immediately suspicious and even hinted at impropriety before he reassured her that he had no interest in her - or any woman, for that matter.

After that personal revelation, they went from colleagues to as close to besties as one could be in a top-secret military project over the last two years. Kristoff admired her tenacity and focus; she reciprocated in admiration of his no-nonsense, get-shit-done attitude and eagerness to clear red tape out of her way.

Elsa sighed again, more heavily. Frustration and glee warred with each other in her heart and on her lips. “I know what I saw, Kristoff. There has to be some way to prove that it was real, some kind of test we can do at the quantum level to show that the superposition-”

He held up his hands in front of him. “Elsa! I’m the dumb army grunt, remember? Tell me what that means in small words that I can understand, please,” Kristoff urged.

“All right…” she smiled. “Everything we can see in the universe vibrates, for a lack of a better term, at a specific frequency.”

“Like a radio station?”

Elsa nodded vigorously. “Yes, exactly. We are tuned to a specific frequency and see and hear everything on it. What we just did in the laboratory - what we’ve been trying to do for years now - is change the station. That was the whole point of Weaseltown-”

“You know he hates that name,” Kristoff chuckled.

“Fine, Weselton - that was the whole point of his project. To make a system that can move matter so that we can make it reappear somewhere else, the perfect bomb delivery system. Like this cup of coffee-” she held up the paper cup, “could reappear anywhere by tuning it to a different station, moving it, and then tuning it back to our station, our reality. Remember when we started this project, what I told you it should behave like?”

Kristoff furrowed his brow, confused. “Yeah, like a transporter from Star Trek. That’s how we sold the DoD on this project at all. I get that, Elsa. But what does that have to do with time and your dream that you went back in time?”

Elsa pinched the bridge of her nose. Boiling down complex theories into terms the average person could understand was never her strong suit. A memory bubbled up from her past, sitting in her bedroom, trying to explain a math problem to Anna and listening to Anna get frustrated, unable to help her understand. Guilt washed over her as it always did, reflecting on all the things she could have done better, done differently, for her sister before she was gone.

Elsa shook her head to clear away the ghosts of the past. “When I… snuck into the lab earlier today, it was because something hit me in the shower. What if we used the oscillator to move an object into superposition not only in location, but also in time? Imagine time as a fourth dimension - length, width, depth, and time. We already know, from the tests we’ve been doing, that we could theoreteically move something to a specified set of coordinates in space. I decided to try sending something to a set of coordinates in time. That’s what I programmed into the oscillator.”

Kristoff ran a hand down his face. “But… how did you know it would work? How did you know it wouldn’t kill you?”

“I didn’t.”

Kristoff spit his coffee across the table. “Elsa! That’s- you’re insane! What possessed you to do that?”

Elsa let out a long breath, her shoulders sagging. “It’s been twenty years to the day, Kristoff.”

“The day of… oh.” Kristoff’s eyes widened with the realization. Elsa had always seemed distant and cool, but after one particularly late night and a beer or two, she’d confessed to Kristoff that she’d lost her sister to a drunk driver when she was just 22 years old, a pivotal moment in her life that drove her to a lifetime of study and professional excellence.

“Okay. So what made you pick your old hometown, then?”

Elsa looked down at her hands. “It wasn’t a conscious choice. I was trying to work out the complexity of the equation in my head as I programmed the coordinates into the oscillator and…” she gestured to the sky, “I just ended up where I did.”

“So… you just decided to roll the dice? You could have ended up in the middle of the ocean or in a volcano or something!”

Elsa shook her head. “It sounds absolutely crazy, and totally irrational coming from me, but… Anna told me it would be all right.” Her eyes softened at the thought, the memory, a few tears gathering. “I dreamed that she was at my side in the lab, watching me, and she told me it would work. That’s where I got the inspiration for using time in my calculations for the oscillator. Anna told me to.”

Kristoff let his head fall into his hands, almost knocking over his coffee cup. “Elsa… please, please do not ever say anything like that aloud again. Weselton will have my head if he thinks you’ve gone off the deep end. Frankly, I’m not convinced you haven’t gone off the deep end. I mean, I know you’re brilliant and everything but that just sounds… crazy.”

“I know how it sounds, Kristoff. But it worked, didn’t it?”

“The jury’s still out on that. In fact-” he turned to see Kai hustling into the lab as quickly as his portly stature would permit. “What have you got, Gooshie?”

Kai cleared his throat. “According to the sensors in the observation room, Doctor Beckett did indeed achieve superposition. What’s more, according to the electromagnetic sensors, she returned with her subcortical metabolic activities substantially diminished, approximately 24% off the baseline from when the experiment started.”

Kristoff rolled his eyes. “English, guys! Please. Help the dumb soldier out. What does any of that mean?”

Elsa raised her hand, grinning. “It’s a part of the brain that changes over time between sleep cycles. The longer you’re awake, the more that part of the brain changes. When you sleep, you refresh that part of the brain. Kai’s saying that I’ve been awake for longer than the 7 minutes I was gone in this time. How long, Kai?”

“You show metabolic levels associated with being gone for approximately 4-6 hours, Doctor Beckett.”

Elsa jumped up from her chair with a cheer, knocking over her coffee cup and startling Kristoff into dropping his. “Yes! I knew it! I knew it worked! I really did see Anna! We did it!” She grabbed Kai and hugged him awkwardly for a moment.

Realization slowly dawned on Kristoff, and a smile crept upon his lips. “We… we did it? We succeeded? Holy shit! I mean… you guys, this… we’ve really done it! This whole project worked out!” Fireworks exploded in Kristoff’s mind. Weselton would get his superweapon, the project would be perpetually funded, and he might even get a promotion out of it. “I… I’ll be right back. I need to go call Weselton and tell him the news!” Kristoff charged out of the room.

“Doctor Beckett-” Kai lowered his voice, looking at the door Kristoff had just exited, “There’s something else. When you returned, I detected continuous elevated levels of bosons in your quantum signature.”

“Elevated how?”

“As though you hadn’t left the oscillator,” he whispered, concern furrowing his brow. “Your atoms and molecules are still in a state of quantum flux, as though they’re not quite settled back into our place and time.”

Elsa looked down at her hands. Though no one else had said anything, to her eyes, her skin was still sparkling. Tiny flecks of blue light like the smallest snowflakes cascaded off her, like a gentle breeze in a winter’s flurry. She shoved her hands in the pockets of the lab coat and breathed deeply.

“All right. Let’s… let’s get a test set up to see what we can learn.” Elsa walked with Kai back to the laboratory after refilling her cup of coffee.

The two scientists stepped into the observation room and began resetting all the sensors when Elsa braced herself against the desk, breathing heavily and feeling unwell. Kai turned his head from his screen to look at Elsa, only to lose whatever words he was about to say, his mouth hanging open.

Elsa’s coffee was levitating out of its cup as though they were in outer space.

“Kai… what- what’s going on?”

Gushman grabbed his portable sensory unit and began measuring. “It would appear… Doctor Beckett, this is quite remarkable. It would appear there is a local tachyonic field here somehow. That should be impossible - the oscillator isn’t powered up yet.”

He took a step closer to the coffee cup and watched one of the gauges brighten on the instrument. “Fascinating, Doctor. Look at these readings!”

Gushman moved to show Elsa the tablet computer, only to see the indicator brighten and turn red when he stood next to her. “It’s- it’s you, Doctor Beckett! You appear to be the source of this field!”

Elsa nodded sharply, feeling the tingling sensation quickly cover her whole body, the flecks of light brightening into tiny lightning bolts. The electricity stiffened her muscles; reaching out an arm became a monumental effort. Her eyes turned to look at Kai, desperation flashing in them…

… and she vanished in a bright flash of white light, the lab coat drifting to the floor, as Kai’s instruments sounded every manner of alarm.

## Author’s Notes

Thank you so much for all the feedback - comments, kudos, reviews, likes, etc. I appreciate it. This chapter now sets the pattern for the rest of the story - past, present, past, present, in alternating formats.

* * *

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	5. Enjoy the Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsa meets Anna for the first time.

# Episode 4: Enjoy the Silence

 _Eagle Valley, Indiana, 1990_ _Elsa is 42 and 10, Anna is 7_

Blue lightning sparks filled the nighttime air, a stark contrast to the pink floral wallpaper in the bedroom. Pink and green crocus flowers sewn into the heavy woolen rug muffled the sound of Elsa’s body falling out of space and time.

Elsa knelt on the floor of the room, gathering her senses. The last time she’d jumped through time and space, she’d been lucky enough to land in a supply closet. This time, she wasn’t nearly as lucky, appearing in what looked like a very, very pink bedroom. A little girl’s room.

 _Crap_ , she thought. _This is going to be really hard to explain if anyone sees me like this_. Elsa’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the combination of scents and textures immediately told here where she was, letting her relax just a tiny bit.

Anna’s room - when they were little kids.

She looked around and saw the wooden toy chest that held her sister’s prized possessions, and the little stuffed blue doll with yellow yarn hair made to look like her. Their parent had each given them a doll that looked like the other. Anna’s rocking horse sat in the corner of the room. Books covered the small walnut bookshelf in the corner of the room. A cheerful little sunflower-themed clock radio on the nightstand showing 1:42 AM.

Nostalgia surged in Elsa’s heart. This was Anna’s room before everything bad happened to her, before the drinking, the partying, the drugs… the accident. Tears welled unbidden to her eyes, remembering their younger days.

“Hello? Who’s there?” called out a tiny, muffled voice from underneath a gigantic fluffy pink comforter. A shock of red hair and teal eyes peeked over the top of the blankets.

Elsa turned to look at Anna, buried under the covers. “Hi,” she whispered.

“Who are you?”, the tiny face asked, more curious than afraid.

Elsa paused. What should she tell Anna? While Anna would have no memory of her, if she was caught by Iduna and Agnar, they would clearly remember her from the hospital. She’d have quite a bit of explaining to do; perhaps the truth, outlandish as it was, would better serve her in the long run. Elsa looked at her sister carefully. Anna looked almost exactly as she remembered her; only a few minor details seemed slightly different. Elsa took a breath and walked over to the bed, sitting down on the edge.

“My name is… Miss Elsa.”

Anna’s eyes brightened. “That’s my sister’s name. I love my sister. I want to be just like her someday,” the little girl smiled. “You have hair just like Elsa’s, it’s the same pretty color. I wish I had hair like that instead of stupid red hair.”

“I love your hair, Anna. It’s beautiful.” Elsa ran her fingers gently through little Anna’s hair, suppressing more nostalgic tears.

“Hey, wait a minute, Miss Elsa. How do you know my name?”

Elsa smiled and noticed a twinkle in her sister’s eyes. _That was different_ , she thought to herself. Anna’s eyes had always been a lovely teal color, but they had always been a little… flat. Anna herself had been a good person, a good woman with a heart of gold, but she had also been a little… slow at times. _Perhaps I’ve already altered Anna’s life_ , she thought to herself.

Elsa snapped back to the moment, realizing Anna was still waiting for her to answer. “I’ll tell you, but only if you can keep a secret,” she smiled, stage whispering as the little girl vigorously nodded her assent. “I’m actually your sister, too, from the future.”

“Whoa, really?”, the little girl exclaimed, eyes wide with wonder.

“You don’t seem surprised by that, Anna.”

“Well, you do have the same hair color as my sister. Wait, if my sister comes in here, will you be meeting yourself?”

Elsa giggled and nodded. “Yes. In fact, she’s already met me. We met when you were born.”

Anna scrunched up her brow. “So there are two of you?”

“Sort of. Remember, I’m from the future.”

“What am I like in the future?”

Elsa felt as though she froze solid. Just the thought of the future, the future without Anna in it that she’d already lived, was like a stab wound to her heart. Seeing little Anna here, alive and vibrant, tore at that wound all the harder. She found it almost impossible to breathe, much less speak.

“You…” Both words and the truth failed Elsa. She couldn’t bear to tell Anna the fate she was desperately trying to avoid. “You’re still my favorite person, my favorite sister, and you grow up to be the most important person I know.”

Anna smiled broadly. “That sounds so nice! I’ll bet you’re my favorite too. Can I ask you another question?”

Elsa nodded, her eyes wet with tears from the moment. To hear her sister at all, in any capacity, twenty years after her untimely death, was a blessing. Even if Project Q never accomplished anything else, having just a few more moments with Anna made the lifetime of work worthwhile.

“Why are you… nakee?” the little redhead asked, pointing at her.

Both girls giggled, Elsa blushing a touch as well. “Well, where I’m from, in order to come here, I’m not allowed to bring anything with me at all, not even clothing.”

“Not even undies?”

“Not even!” she playfully exclaimed to Anna. Elsa looked around, remembering the house she’d grown up in. Memories came flooding back, and she was certain she could navigate it with her eyes closed. “But maybe I can sneak out into the hall very quietly, I think Mommy keeps some robes in one of the closets, doesn’t she?”

Anna nodded. “She sure does in the hall.”

“I’ll be right back,” Elsa winked.

* * *

After a near disaster tripping over some of Anna’s toys littering the hallway outside her room, Elsa managed to snag one of Iduna’s robes and make it back into Anna’s bedroom undetected. She sighed a breath of relief with her back to the door and found Anna staring intently at her.

“So will you play with me, Miss Elsa?”

Elsa smiled and sat on the floor. “As long as we’re quiet, I don’t want to wake your… our parents. What do you want to play?”

“How about Uno?” Anna squealed, already rummaging through her toy chest to find the deck of cards in its tattered cardboard box. “I love to play it, but my sister doesn’t like playing with me.” She doesn’t wait for a response, immediately shuffling the cards.

“So… why do you suppose your sister doesn’t play with you?”, Elsa asked, frowning.

Anna looks up in surprise. No one had ever asked her opinion on the matter, and she scrunched up her face thinking about it. “She’s the older sister so Mommy and Daddy give her lots more to do. She has to be really good at school, and she doesn’t have time to play. Mommy and Daddy say school is the most important thing for her.”

Tears welled in Elsa’s eyes at Anna’s forlorn expression. “Oh Anna… I know she loves you, because I love you, and I always have.”

“Draw two!” Anna exclaims dramatically.

Laughter bubbles up from Elsa’s chest at the discontinuity of Anna’s glee and her own emotional turmoil. She takes two cards from the draw pile carefully. “Do you like having your own room, Anna?”

Anna blinks and stares at Elsa as thought she’d just been asked if she thought about whether horses could fly. “Sometimes! But sometimes it’s lonely, so I sneak down to Elsa’s room and climb into bed with her. She doesn’t always like it, but sometimes she’s sad and she’ll sneak into my room, too. Skip!” The redheaded girl gleefully tosses another two cards on the pile.

 _That’s odd_ , mused Elsa. She remembered a distinctly different childhood. Their parents had separated the two because they didn’t get along at all as little kids; Anna had broken several of Elsa’s favorite toys in a burst of childish rage, and after a while, Elsa had been given her own room. Anna’d spent many a night knocking on the door, asking and pleading to be let in, but Elsa had kept the door locked for years because of Anna’s temper.

“I keep telling Mommy and Daddy we should just have one room together. Then we’d be able to share our toys all the time,” the little girl sighed wistfully.

“That’s a nice idea. I’m sure your sister would like that. She may not always know it, but you’re her favorite person in the whole wide world,” she smiled kindly.

Anna beamed with joy at the thought before pouting furiously as Elsa laid down a Wild Draw Four. “If I were your favorite, you wouldn’t have played that, Miss Elsa!”

Both sisters laughed, straining to keep their voices down. After a couple of rounds of Uno, Anna yawned sleepily and Elsa tucked her back into her bed. “Will you be here later, Miss Elsa?”

Elsa shook her head gently, her eyes glistening with moisture. “I’m pretty sure I’ll have to go, Anna, but you’ll see me again. After all, I’m really your sister, so you’ll see a version of me every day. Remember who I grow up to be when you sometimes get mad at me, okay? Someone who loves you very, very much.” Elsa breathed, barely about to get the words out without breaking down.

A small hand cups her cheek and brushes the tear away with a soft, warm thumb. “It’s okay, Miss Elsa. I didn’t mean to make you cry. You’re my favorite person in the whole wide world too!” Petite arms drape around Elsa’s neck in an impossibly strong grip as the sisters’ cheeks collide.

“I’m going to sneak down the hall to visit…um, myself… okay, Anna? I love you. I love you so much.” She kissed Anna on the forehead and within moments, the little redhead was snoring loudly.

 _If only there were a way to save these moments_ , Elsa thought, trying her best to burn them into her mind. Even if the experiment overall wasn’t a success, if her goal of changing the past for the better couldn’t be achieved, at least she’d earned a few more moments with her sister, and she treated each one as precious as the rarest jewels.

* * *

“Psst. Elsa! Elsa, wake up!”

The little blonde girl rolled over and groaned into her pillow. “It’s not time for school yet, Mommy,” she mumbled into the cloth.

“I know, Elsa. I’m not your Mommy.”

Little blue eyes shot wide open as she flipped over, fearing some kind of monster or evil creatures and instead seeing someone… familiar. Confusion flooded the features of her young face. “Who are you? You look like someone… I think I know?”

Elsa smiled at younger self. “We’ve met before, Elsa. Do you remember when your sister was born?”

The little blonde scrunched up her face deep in thought, staring off at the ceiling for almost a minute before she made the connection. “You’re the doctor who talked to me!”

The elder version nodded and grinned. “I am.”

“What, umm, what are you doing in my bedroom? Shouldn’t you be at the hospital? Oh no, is someone sick? Is Anna sick?” Worry fractured little Elsa’s smile.

Elsa put a hand gently on the girl’s shoulder. “No, everything is fine. I was visiting Anna to see how she was, and I thought I would stop in to say hello quietly.” She contemplated the anxious bundle of nerves that was her younger self before speaking again. Had she always been this anxious? “Anna is fine, she’s just lonely. She misses playing with her best friend in the whole wide world.”

Sapphire eyes turned down in shame. “I know, I’m just… I have to do well in school, Mommy and Daddy say so. So I spend all my time doing school stuff, and by the time I do all my homework, it’s almost bedtime.”

Elsa ruffles the blonde hair on her young counterpart. “I know. School is important, of course. It’s how I got to be a doctor. But family is important too, Elsa. The time-” she chokes back a tear, “- the time you have together isn’t forever, even if it seems like it is now. Maybe… maybe you can set aside a time every day when you play with Anna, even if it’s only a few minutes?”

Little Elsa nods. “I- I can do that. I miss playing with Anna, too. Even if all she ever wants to do is play stupid Uno,” she smirks with an impish grin.

Elsa laughs, looking carefully at her younger self with sadness. So much pain waited for her in the years to come, pain that the little girl would be powerless to stop. The incongruity between what her parents would tell her constantly - that she was so smart, she could do anything she set her mind to - and reality prodded her heart like burrs in a saddle. _I could do anything I set my mind to except save my sister from herself_ , she thought bitterly.

Familiar tingling begins in Elsa’s fingers and toes. “Elsa, I have to go soon. It was nice seeing you, and I hope you and Anna can play a lot together. Remember that she loves you more than anything, so be kind to her when she gets mad at you.” She gives her young self a kiss on the forehead, hastily tucks her back in, and flees her old room.

Where in her old house can she go that won’t make too much commotion? She sneaks downstairs quietly; her parents’ bedroom is on the first floor, and the wooden floors creak, but the basement door isn’t too far from the stairs. Quietly closing it behind her, she takes a few steps down the stairs, blue lightning beginning to arc over her skin. Just above her head, she hears her parents’ bed creak, but before she can think of anything else, she feels the falling sensation of being pulled through time and breathes a final sigh of relief.

Iduna’s robe flutters down across several of the stairs, and the family cat sits on it once the ruckus ends.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

We’re now diving deeper into the timeline and Elsa thinks she’s seeing changes in it already. Is she? Or does she just not remember the past very clearly?

* * *

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	6. One Moment in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Doctor Beckett!" Kai practically shrieked. "You can't just go meeting yourself! That- that could have universe-ending consequences! Think of the paradoxes!"

# Episode 5: One Moment in Time

_Groom Lake, Nevada, 2022_

Electric sparks arced over the controls of the observation room as Elsa materialized in the center of the room, almost exactly where she’d disappeared. As before, she reappeared entirely nude, crouched down in exactly the position she’d been in when she left her parents’ basement.

Gooshie was waiting for her this time with his tablet computer and sensors already scanning. He made all sorts of excited unintelligible noises, rapidly pushing controls on the computer, lights flashing on the sensor array.

Elsa looked up, a wan smile on her lips. The journey was more familiar to her now. “How long?”

Kristoff’s voice echoed from behind her. “About 10 minutes. One minute you were standing in the middle of the room with this-” he handed her the lab coat again, his eyes still covered, “- and then you were gone. How long were you gone this time?”

“About… at least a few hours. I was back in my sister’s room when she was little. 7 or 8 years old, I’d guess. But… things were different than I remember. She was a little different, and so was I,” she said, sounding puzzled. “Then I spent… I’m not sure, maybe half an hour talking to myself?”

“Doctor Beckett!” Kai practically shrieked. “You can’t just go meeting yourself! That- that could have universe-ending consequences! Think of the paradoxes!”

Elsa smirked and rolled her eyes. “Gooshie, we established years ago that time travel, if it existed, would not be like Back to the Future, much as we might want it to be. The Novikov self-consistency principle says history always reverts back to whatever was supposed to happen. Now, I know I haven’t been gone for more than about half an hour in this timeline, but I’ve been awake for almost 20 hours biologically, so… I need a nap. I’ll be in the barracks.” She began to head for the door when Kristoff blocked her way.

“Elsa… what if you vanish again? You probably shouldn’t leave the facility. No, scratch that, you definitely shouldn’t leave the facility. Why don’t you just camp out on one of the couches in the break room?” He gently guided her towards the access corridor door.

“All right,” the blonde scientist sighed. “You’re right.” She yawned widely. “I hate it when you’re right,” she jabbed Kristoff in the ribs with a pointed elbow and a warm smile before turning to the other scientists. “I- I’m sorry, everyone. I didn’t mean to alarm anyone or make you all get up in the middle of the night.”

Kai, Gerda, and Kristoff all nodded and smiled. Kristoff surveyed his motley crew. “We’ll talk more in the morning. Get some rest - that goes for everyone.”

Elsa wandered into the laboratory break room, which was surprisingly well-appointed for a military facility. Several of the couches were littered with stuff; she picked the couch furthest from the door and tossed Kristoff’s guitar onto a different couch, muttering that he must have been born in a stable, before curling up. Her body was exhausted, but her heart was elated. After so many years, to see her sister in any capacity was a dream come true, and she fell asleep with Anna’s name on her lips.

* * *

Elsa woke to the slightly uncomfortable scene of Kai standing over her, examining her with his ever-present tablet and sensors, his plaid green shirt and suspenders under his lab coat making him look like a confused lumberjack. “Gooshie… what time is it, and why are you hovering?”

“Forgive me, Doctor Beckett! I just wanted to get some more readings. We recalibrated our sensors this morning and the tachyonic field is still strongest with you, but it’s suffused the entire facility. The good news is that the particles appear to be decaying at a linear rate-”

Elsa shook the cobwebs off and sat up, wrapping the white laboratory coat around her. Pleasant hazy dreams gave way to the drab iron grey walls of the break room. “So this being yanked through time thing… it’s temporary?”

Kai’s large head bobbed. “Quite, Doctor. I’m not certain why you haven’t vanished again, as it’s been some time since the last two intervals, but the tachyonic field will probably be gone in a day or two. Eighty percent of the particles from the experiment remain active now.”

Elsa sauntered over to one of the ubiquitous coffee pots and poured a cup into a paper cup. “And it’s now covering the facility as well…” she mused, walking into the observation room with Kai trailing her closely, insistently taking readings. She carefully put the coffee cup on the desk and walked into the oscillation chamber, the giant metal ring hanging motionless in the center of the room.

“Doctor Beckett, if I may…”

“Gooshie, I am never going to convince you to call me Elsa, am I?”

Kai laughed, a broad grin on his face. “No, Doctor. It wouldn’t be proper.”

She chuckled. “I swear, you’d fit right into a medieval castle’s staff or something. Anyway, go ahead with what you were going to ask.”

“Why did you do what you did? Why did you aim the photonic cannon at the oscillator? It could have killed you.”

Elsa sighed, idly rubbing a finger over the tungsten steel ring. “I knew it wouldn’t. We thought that quantum displacement would occur downrange by forcing the bosons generated from the oscillator at the beam, but I had a…” she paused, remembering Kristoff’s warning, “… an insight that we might see a much larger effect by forcing the beam at the bosons in generation instead.”

Kai gaped at the senior scientist. “That… that’s BRILLIANT, Doctor! But- did you know it would displace you through time?”

“It was… a possibility,” she lied, remembering the day that started this experiment. She was in her laboratory in Oslo a few years ago, studying quantum phenomena in an effort to crack the code on time travel. She’d known the only way she’d ever get to see Anna again would be by jumping across space and time to the past; while quantum theory made changing the past a literal impossibility, she could at least see the past and experience it again, interact with her sister one more time.

Before Anna’s lethal accident, she’d had another fight, a bad one. Anna was still in a downward spiral with that moron Hans, and their last interaction had been a harsh one. She’d shouted horrible things in anger, not knowing they’d be the last words she ever said to her sister, and those abrasive, cutting words haunted her ever since.

Anna was her motivation for the last 20 years of study, doggedly researching how she might see her sister one more time, to say the words she couldn’t, to say goodbye properly. No one else knew, of course; they simply saw a brilliant scientist tackling some of the most difficult challenges in physics.

The experiment thus far was successful insofar as she found her way back in time, just not to the moment she’d intended. She’d visited Anna at her birth and as a little kid. What next, rebellious pre-teen Anna? That Anna was made miserable by school, particularly math class, and Elsa hadn’t been the best sister she could have been, letting Anna struggle on her own.

Elsa reflected on the journey so far. Wonderful though each version was, none was the version of her sister she needed to apologize to.

Kai had asked her something, snapping her back to the present moment. “I- I’m sorry, Gooshie. Say that again please?”

“What just happened, Doctor? My instruments showed a surge of energy around you just a moment ago. Did you feel something?” He tapped his tablet ferociously, analyzing the sensor readings he gathered from around Elsa.

She shook her head. “No, no, I was just daydreaming. Remembering something about my sister…” she paused and looked down, familiar tingling beginning in her fingers again.

The oscillator ring sparkled at her touch, and blue lightning began to arc from it to her body and back. “Gooshie… you might want to step back.” A small smile crept onto her face as sparks covered her skin. She knelt down, anticipating what was about to happen.

Kai stepped back a little but held his scanner as close to the electrical chaos as he could, flinching each time a spark got too near him, but doggedly trying to capture the event.

In one final giant arc from the oscillator ring, Elsa vanished again, the lab coat once more fluttering to its place on the floor.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

We’ve established more of the rules around this time travel business in this chapter. As I post this, I’ll be doing a double post chapter so episode 6 will be up along with this one.

* * *

### Join The Party

Enjoyed this story? Want to meet fellow readers and discuss? Join the Elsanna Shenanigans community on Discord at discord.gg/TU9NpnH (copy and paste that URL)

As always, please review, kudos, comment, like, follow, all that good stuff. I appreciate it.


	7. I Can Love You Like That

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I promise you, no matter which version of me you're talking about, I think the world of you, Anna. I always have, and I always will."

# Episode 6: I Can Love You Like That

 _Eagle Valley, Indiana, 1995_ _Elsa is 42 and 15, Anna is 12_

Thankfully, whatever lightning formed when Elsa traveled was cold, because her next appearance landed her inside a room filled with flammable materials. She materialized inside what looked like a storage room and wardrobe combined.

 _At least I won’t have to scavenge something to wear_ , she thought, looking at the racks and racks of clothes. Most of them were outlandishly colored, and it took her a few moments to clear her head of disorientation and realize she was looking at costumes. Racks of costumes of every kind, from Victorian England to badly-made science fiction uniforms - and mostly in sizes too small for her.

After a few moments of searching, she found a reasonably modest and sensible outfit, complete with a lab coat. Once decently attired, she opened the door to peek out and get her bearings. The letters EVMS decorated many of the items nearby - bulletin boards, papers, posters.

 _School_ , she thought. One of the posters on the wall announced the Fall 1995 talent show and encouraged students to see their homeroom teachers for entry. The pieces slowly snapped together; she was in the Eagle Valley Middle School. 1995 meant that Anna would be about 12 years old if it was autumn. She grinned more broadly and walked the corridors; schools wouldn’t be overly suspicious of an adult just wandering around for a few more years, when the first major school shooting would occur.

Memories flooded back; she’d attended the same school as Anna, and she swiftly remembered where everything was - the library, the computer lab, the playground. Less happy memories came along with it. Anna getting in fight after fight at school. Sometimes her parents had Elsa pick up her sister from the bus stop (the high school let out earlier) and Anna would come home surly and bruised. The few times she was willing to talk to her older sister, she’d grunt that some stupid girl had picked on her for any number of reasons, and they’d settled it on the playground.

Elsa headed for the playground, walking down the corridors, past the library, to the hilly green fields that surrounded the school. Some of the fields were conventional, like the soccer field and the baseball field, but one of the fields had some huge boulders left behind by one of the ice ages, and as a kid she’d sit on the for as long as possible during recess. She’d never really gotten along with the kids in her class, even when she was little; the kind of person who has 7 PhDs and a IQ of 267 isn’t the kind of person who enjoys time with their peers.

To her surprise, her favorite boulder was occupied by 12-year old Anna, who’d just run out to the boulder field as soon as the recess bell had sounded and was now perched on one of the rocks. She was sitting cross-legged with her face in her hands, and even at a distance, Elsa could see the shaky rise and fall of her shoulders as she sobbed. Her backpack lay next to her, a book open with its pages fluttering in the cool autumn breeze.

She hurried over to the boulder and deftly climbed up the five foot tall rock; as a kid, she’d skinned her knees many a time on that rock. Anna was so lost in her sorrows that she didn’t hear Elsa’s arrival until the blonde put her hand gently on her shoulder.

Anna gasped. “AUGH! Oh my God, don’t do that, Elsa! Wait… what?” Realization of which version of Elsa was sitting with her hit Anna like a two by four to the face. “It- how- Elsa? Like, Big Elsa?”

Her sister smirked and arched an eyebrow. “Big Elsa?”

“That’s the name I started calling you in my head to separate you from my sister. I mean, I know you’re my sister too, but you’re the grownup version, and Grownup Elsa sounds so bogus.”

“I forgot about all the terrible jargon of the 1990s,” Elsa sighed. “So, what’s wrong?”

Anna’s shoulders slumped again, the pleasant surprise of meeting her adult sister once again vanishing. “I have a math test this afternoon, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to fail it. And it’s a mid-term, which means…” her breath hitched, as she forced back tears, “… if I don’t pass it, I might fail math again, and Mama and Papa will be so angry with me, and I’ll be grounded for like a month, and-”

Elsa’s brow furrowed. “Do you ever ask your sister for help?”

“As if!” the redhead snorted, indignation apparent on her face.

“You do know that I - and by extension your sister - am really good at math, right?”

Anna blushed. “I… uh… I have trouble talking to you. You’re so cool, you’re in high school while I’m stuck here in lame central. Sometimes I can’t even look at you because I feel like…”

Elsa reached out and gently put a hand on Anna’s shoulder, which Anna promptly covered with both her hands. “Like what, Anna?”

“Like… umm… you’re too cool to even acknowledge that I exist. I mean, you’ve never said that to me, but… I don’t know. I just… I just feel like the little sister who’s hella lame and… you’re like this superstar. Even here, when teachers find out I’m your little sister, they’re all like ‘Oh, Elsa was such an amazing student’ and ‘I hope you’re just like her’. It’s… a lot.”

“Come here.” Elsa hugged her little sister, brushing away her tears. She cherished the feeling of Anna in her arms, alive and whole instead of the nightmares she’d suffered for the last 20 years, her last memories of Anna right after the accident. “I promise you, no matter which version of me you’re talking about, I think the world of you, Anna. I always have, and I always will.”

“Really?” Anna snuffled, gracelessly wiping her nose with her palm.

“Now, about this math test… tell me about it.”

Anna picked up her math textbook as though it were radioactive, thumbing through the pages. “It’s about solving these equations,” she bemoaned, “and I just don’t get it because it’s algebra and I’m a dummy.”

“Hey.” Elsa squeezed her sister’s shoulder. “You’re not a dummy. Tell me what you don’t get, okay?”

“Any of it! It’s all numbers and letters and it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a big jumble. Like look at this,” she gestured angrily at the page, her auburn hair whipping around, “11x - 5 = 3x + 3. What am I supposed to do with that? I feel so stupid, Elsa!”

Her older sister pursed her lips. “Algebra… it’s like organizing things, like cleaning up a little. This example is a mess, isn’t it?” Anna nodded vigorously. “And it’s a mess because it’s all out of sorts. What it’s asking you to do is to help it get organized, to help it get balanced out. Algebra comes from the Arabic language, originally, and it means restoring broken pieces.”

Anna looked at her sister, obviously confused. “I still don’t get it.”

“What’s the first thing you do when you put together a jigsaw puzzle, Anna?”

“Um… besides look at the picture? I guess… sort out all the pieces and find the corners and straight edges.”

“Right. And we do that because…?”

Anna scratched her head. “Because it’s easier to put the puzzle together when we know what certain pieces are?”

“Right. The straight edges and the corners are the pieces we know, and everything else are the pieces we don’t know. Now,” Elsa gestured at the equation, “there are pieces we know and pieces we don’t know. So what you need to do is organize them just the same. You put the pieces you know in one pile - on one side of the equation, and the pieces you don’t know on the other side.”

Anna’s eyes widened and her jaw went slack as she looked at the page, her eyes scanning back and forth over the equation as though she’d never seen it before. The autumn breeze blew her hair, letting the sunlight illuminate each strand as though it were finely spun coppper. A smile slowly tugged at the corners of her mouth. “So… I move the pieces that are only numbers to one side… and I move the pieces that are letters to the other side…”

She grabbed a pencil out of her Clueless-themed backpack and scribbled into her math notebook. “So… I end up with 8x = 8… which means x equals 1. Oh my God, Elsa! I get it! I get it! It makes sense now! It’s all just pieces I have to move around! Oh my God, thank you!” She wrapped her adult sister in a bone-crushing hug, shaking with glee. “Why - why doesn’t anyone TEACH it this way? I’ve felt so dumb looking at it, it never made sense until now!”

Both sisters shared gleeful laughter in the warm sun for a few moments. Anna lay back on the rock, staring up at the clear blue sky. “I wish you could teach me.”

“I can’t, but the version of me that’s here with you all the time can, Anna, and I promise you, she’d be happy to help her sister. As for why the school doesn’t teach that way, it’s complicated, but a big part is that teachers don’t have a big enough view of the world.”

“What do you mean?”

Elsa smiled, losing herself in the past for a moment. From very young, she was a prodigy, learning to read at barely a year old and able to do calculus by age 5. Her present-day self was 15 years old, which meant she’d be graduating from high school in a year and going to MIT shortly thereafter.

Dark memories rushed into her mind, knowing what would come next. In just 9 years, Anna would die, and Elsa would lose herself for a decade, drowning herself in schoolwork to hide the pain. She’d always been told from early on that she was brilliant, a once-in-a-generation genius; after Anna’s death, she questioned what any of it meant if she couldn’t save her sister. Eventually she’d end up with seven doctoral degrees, in music, medicine, quantum physics, archaeology, chemistry, astronomy, and ancient languages - all to drown out the soul-crushing sorrow she felt from Anna’s death.

“Elsa?” the 12-year old’s voice interrupted her waking nightmare.

“Sorry, I uh- I was just remembering something,” she cleared her throat. “The world is a pretty big place, and some teachers are better than others at bringing examples from the world into their explanations. That’s what I meant.” She smiled and tousled Anna’s coppery locks.

In the distance, the recess bell rang, calling the students back to class. Elsa looked at her little sister with nostalgic tears welling in her eyes. “You all set, Anna Banana?” she asked, using her sister’s nickname.

Anna rolled her eyes. “Didn’t I ever tell you I hated that nickname?” she said, suppressing a grin as she haphazardly tossed her stuff into her backpack.

“Many times, but I can’t help myself, even now,” she smiled back. “Shoo, go to class, and show that test what Anna Beckett can do.”

Anna ran off, her Clueless backpack bouncing as she sprinted for the school’s doors. Elsa looked down at the rock and gasped; Anna had accidentally left her prized Sony MiniDisc player behind in her haste to make it back to class. Elsa gathered it up quickly, feeling the familiar heft of the device, and started to walk it back to the school when an idea struck her. She turned around, sat back down on her favorite boulder, checked the battery level and flipped the disc to write mode, and hit record.

* * *

Elsa opened the door to the family home, putting the spare key back under the fake rock. She had about an hour before anyone would be home; their parents worked late, and the school bus wouldn’t drop off the kids for a while.

Nostalgia flooded her senses. Everything about this place felt wonderful. Hints of cookies Iduna had baked recently. The faint smell of ash in the fireplace for keeping cold nights at bay. She smiled at the silly artwork on the walls over the years, though at second glance, they didn’t look as she remembered. Her drawings were always precise, usually some kind of architecture or star chart.

Anna’s drawings used to be relatively poor cartoons, somewhat clumsily drawn. These cartoons looked… better. More lifelike, more realistic; she saw a woman riding a horse with a bow and arrow, an American Indian princess, and some other fairy tale characters.

Elsa puzzled over this revelation. Anna was clearly a better artist now, but her experiment shouldn’t be able to change time. The past should be in the past - quantum mechanics principles said it was impossible to change the past, that time would always enforce self consistency.

She walked up the beige carpeted stairs to the second floor and found Anna’s bedroom at the end of the hall. Sneaking in, she looked around in shock. Posters of actors like Alicia Silverstone and Nicole Kidman graced the walls, along with all sorts of drawings. This wasn’t the sister she remembered at all. At 12 she remembered Anna listening to grunge and rap, perpetually angry at the world and blasting her music as loud as she could.

Elsa carefully left the Minidisc player on Anna’s desk and closed the door to her room gently. Just as she turned around, she froze. Standing at the end of the hallway was the one person who wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Hello, Elsa. Or is it Doctor Arendelle?”

Elsa couldn’t deny it; in this time period, she was 15 years old and was clearly the same person that had been at Anna’s birth. Her heart raced, looking at her mother, dressed as she always was around the house in a royal purple robe. Words stuck in her throat; she attempted to swallow, but couldn’t breathe. Finally, she composed herself, nervously straightened the lab coat she’d borrowed from the school dressing room, and looked her mother in the eye.

“Hi Mama. I imagine… you have some questions.”

Iduna smiled softly, her brown eyes still radiating the kindness and warmth of a parent who hasn’t yet lost a child. “I do, though fewer then you might imagine. You are my daughter, yes?”

Elsa nodded. “I am.”

“How old are you now?”

“Forty-two years old.”

“Mmm. Six years older than me. When does Anna die?”

Elsa froze, slack jawed, staring at her mother. “How- how did you- how COULD you know that?” she sputtered after recovering.

Iduna smiled. “Motherly instincts. You love your sister. Even now, when you’re only 15 years old, you love your sister so much, and she loves you. When you were little, you would say such adorable things like ‘true love defies the laws of physics’ to her. And you take such good care of her. Once you turned 10, you practically acted like a second mother to her. Which means you wouldn’t be here, doing exactly what you said as a toddler, unless she was in mortal danger. Now when, Elsa?”

“Nine years from now. Drunk driver,” she said, her shoulders sagging. “I… I invented time traveling so I could see her again one last time and apologize to her. I said… some very harsh things to her, and those were the last words I ever said.”

Iduna closed the distance and hugged Elsa tightly just as her resolve broke, sobs heaving her chest. “There, there. It’s all right, Elsa.” She chuckled briefly as she soothed her adult daughter. “Remember what I always tell you, no matter what age you are?”

“Let… let it go,” Elsa smiled through the tears.

Moments passed in silence, Elsa relaxing in her mother’s arms, when Iduna spoke softly. “Can you change it? Stop her from dying?”

Elsa shook her head, a couple remaining slowly moving down her cheeks. “I- I don’t think so. Quantum physicists discovered years ago that the past automatically corrects itself. I can travel back and see what was, but I have no impact on it. This-” she stepped away from her mother’s embrace for a moment to gesture around, “-is immutable, and I can’t change it, no matter how much I want to. And believe me, I want to so badly.”

“So you did all this just for…?”

“Peace of mind. A final goodbye, a proper one. Knowing that to me, my last words to Anna will be kind and loving instead of filled with anger and spite,” Elsa hung her head in shame once more.

Iduna embraced her daughter again. “You’re a good sister, Elsa, no matter what happened. You always have been, and you always will be. Are you going to wait for her to come home?”

“If I can. I don’t seem to have very much control over when I appear and disappear.” She looked down at her hands and felt a familiar tingling. “Actually… it would appear I’m not going to be able to stay. Would you tell Anna I love her for me?”

A soft smile graced Iduna’s face as she cupped Elsa’s cheek. “Of course. I’ll tell you the same, too, when you get home. You both deserve all the love in the world. And Elsa?”

Elsa looked up.

“Thank you for saving her.”

Blue lightning crawled over Elsa’s body as she stared at her mother in confusion. Saving Anna wasn’t possible; she’d done years of research understanding closed timelike curves, testing function after function. Just as she opened her mouth to respond, time renewed its grasp on her and she vanished in a flash of white light.

Iduna picked up the abandoned clothes and grinned, folding them carefully. Elsa had always been a strong-minded child, and clearly had made a life of doing the impossible. If anyone could save Anna from her fate, she knew it would be her elder daughter.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

Elsa is so hell bent on the idea that time is fixed, like a movie you rewatch. For someone so smart, she’s missing some pretty obvious stuff. One might think she was a little… clueless.

Eagle-eyed observers who read the first few chapters of this story will notice I’ve retconned the location of the story from the fictional town of Elk Ridge, Indiana to Eagle Valley, Indiana. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine why.

* * *

### Join The Party

Enjoyed this story? Want to meet fellow readers and discuss? Join the Elsanna Shenanigans community on Discord at discord.gg/TU9NpnH (copy and paste that URL)

As always, please review, kudos, comment, like, follow, all that good stuff. I appreciate it.


	8. Turn Back Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "That's not an excuse to fall off the wagon, and you know it. After we're done here today, I'm taking you to another meeting, okay?"

# Episode 7: Turn Back Time

_Groom Lake, Nevada, 2022_

Electricity arced over the oscillator ring and exactly a quarter hour after she left, Elsa returned to the oscillation chamber. By now, the pattern of her disappearances and reappearances was well established enough that Gerda simply handed her the lab coat the moment she finished materializing as Kai scanned her.

“Twenty minutes this time, Doctor Beckett,” he said with a smile.

Elsa buttoned up the lab coat and wordlessly ran for the restroom while Kai processed his data, eager as always. Though he’d been a data coordinator on dozens of projects for the military over the years, this was his big break, promoted to Scientist III on a high-profile project within the Department of Defense.

Kristoff strolled back into the room, his ever-present cup of coffee in hand to fight his equally ever-present fatigue. “Well? What’s it looking like?”

Kai looked up from his instruments, a puzzled look on his rotund face. “It’s still quite mystifying, Colonel. 70% of the bosonic particles remain active, yet we still have no clear power source for where they are coming from. They should have faded away the moment we turned off the oscillator.”

Kristoff shook his head. “I still don’t even understand a third of the science behind this after two years. How the hell am I going to explain to Weselton that his pet project sort of works but not really, and might accidentally beam a bomb into the distant past?”

“That’s the least of our problems,” Elsa’s voice cut through his worrying. “Kristoff, you might want to grab either a bigger cup of coffee or a pair of headphones, because I need to ask Kai some very technical questions.”

Kristoff pulled a chair from the observation room onto the floor of the oscillation chamber and sat down heavily in it, surreptitiously digging a small orange bottle from his uniform breast pocket. He wasn’t subtle enough.

“I thought you got rid of those, Kristoff,” Elsa hissed, staring the blond man down. “Can I have the room for a moment please?” she asked aloud, Kai and Gerda departing for the lounge.

The colonel looked at the bottle sheepishly, avoiding Elsa’s glare. “I… uh, I thought I had. These were- they were in my truck, under the seat. I only found them after the drive over here.”

She snatched the container out of his hands and threw it like a baseball down the oscillating chamber’s firing range, listening to the plastic bottle clatter down one of the maintenance wells. “You know better. We’ve talked about this,” she spit.

And they had. A year ago, Kristoff had hit a rough patch and was clearly out of sorts. Elsa noticed it and asked Gerda if this had been a problem before, but the CMO hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Elsa had, mainly because she recognized the symptoms from Anna’s drug addiction as a teenager. She’d talked to him late into the night, helping him figure out alternatives to the intoxication he frequently sought.

“I- I know. I can’t help it, Elsa. The pressure, all the time from Weselton and his boss… it’s just too much sometimes. Weselton has been calling non-stop and…”

Elsa arched an eyebrow at his pregnant pause. “And what?”

“… and threatened to replace me on this project if we don’t show some results in the next two weeks.”

She exhaled upwards in frustration, ruffling her bangs. “That’s not an excuse to fall off the wagon, and you know it. After we’re done here today, I’m taking you to another meeting, okay?” A silent nod was all she received in return, but it was enough. She opened the laboratory door and shouted down the hall for the other two scientists to return.

Kai cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. “You wanted to discuss something, Doctor Beckett?”

“Yes. We’ve been working on the premise this whole time that Novikov’s self-consistency principle is at work, that any changes made in the past are rendered immaterial so that time remains consistent, yes?”

The portly man nodded vigorously. “Yes, Doctor. That’s generally accepted. Though we may be able to jump backwards in a timelike curve, we are prevented from making any changes for time to remain self-consistent. One cannot go back and shoot their grandfather and such.”

Elsa paced for a long moment, hesitating to give voice to the question gnawing at her since speaking with her mother as the rest of the staff watched her keenly. “What if it’s not true?”

Kai chuckled, his thumbs absentmindedly rubbing up and down his suspenders under his lab coat. “How could it not be true, Doctor? You’ve traveled through time thrice now and nothing has changed despite you being there for substantial amounts of time and at critical moments in your own life, has it?”

“But,” she said haltingly, “I think something did change. This last time, I was in Anna’s room when she was 12 years old, and the posters on the wall were different. Her artwork hanging up in the house was different. It was a good different, but it was significantly different - and shouldn’t have been different at all, should it? If we believe Novikov’s principle to be absolute, then nothing should have changed at all.”

The portly scientist stuttered and stumbled for words. “Well, umm, perhaps- perhaps none of these things were in danger of causing a paradox! After all, that’s what Novikov and Polchinski were trying to prove, that you couldn’t go back in time and shoot your grandfather.”

Elsa rapped her fingertips on the hard tungsten surface of the oscillator ring, her brow deeply furrowed. “Time either does or doesn’t change, Gooshie-”

“Doctor!” Kai interrupted, “Very few things in our line of work are binary choices. We left binary behind a long time ago,” he grinned. Both scientists broke out into laughter, while Kristoff frowned in confusion.

“I’m guessing that’s a physics joke?” he grumbled.

“Yes, yes, my apologies, Colonel. The, ah, nature of our work is predicated on binary choices simply not existing. We would not be here in this room today if the universe worked that way. Instead, as we have proven and are rapidly proving now, the universe is an array of infinite choices and possibilities. Now,” Kai chuckled again, turning his attention back to his principal investigator, “I concede you may have a point. You have met yourself twice now and have not caused any paradoxes thus far, so it’s possible Novikov’s principle only applies to things that would break time, and what you’ve done so far has not broken time.”

As Kai spoke, Elsa grew more and more pale, her eyes widening. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, and her hands began to tremble. “I… I need some time to think. If… if you’ll excuse me.” She glanced at Kristoff as she headed out the door of the oscillation chamber. “We WILL talk later.”

* * *

A military complex with a top-secret project that consumes inordinate amounts of power is by definition large and sparsely populated, giving Elsa plenty of places to walk and clear her mind without leaving the facility. She climbed up another flight of metal stairs in what to the outside world looked like an aircraft hangar, but on the inside looked like a gigantic steel and glass doughnut.

The steel stairs gave way to a catwalk over the particle accelerator, the source of the raw energy needed to fuel the time travel experiment. The air inside the accelerator facility was cool and dry, the better to keep corrosion at bay from several billion dollars of equipment, but it also reminded her of Oslo, where her time travel adventure began.

She walked over the massive ring, its steady thrum sounding like a heartbeat, sky blue flashes of light emitting from glass windows in the ring as pulses of energy raced around the interior.

Elsa gripped the handrails, her legs still unsteady. _Novikov isn’t absolute_ , she repeated to herself. _The past can be changed._ The implications of Kai’s words a few hours ago kept hitting her like a bolt of lightning. It was like realizing the sun might not come up tomorrow, or that gravity might just stop working. If time wasn’t absolute, that meant change was possible as long as it didn’t cause paradoxes. After all, basic physics prevents people from doing all sorts of things, like flying unassisted.

She couldn’t go back in time and shoot herself, but what if she COULD save Anna?

She’d assumed for years, ever since starting her research, that Anna was beyond saving. She could go back in time, visit her, apologize to her, try to set things right for her own peace of mind, but still had to accept that Anna would die at the age of 21 to a drunk driver. She’d always been pursuing the perfect goodbye.

But if saving Anna didn’t cause a paradox… it might be possible to save her.

Elsa sat down hard on the metal grating, bruising her tailbone but not caring. She wrestled with her own heart, trying to smother the hope that blossomed in her chest. She scolded herself for acting like a child, wanting something she likely wouldn’t get, like Anna did that one Christmas when she’d had her heart set on getting tickets to Lauryn Hill’s tour when she was 15. Her parents absolutely forbid it, and she’d stormed out of the house.

Looking back, Elsa realized that was the turning point for when things went from bad to worse. Anna’s rebellious streak pushed her away from the family, and she’d started hanging out more and more with a bad crowd.

She forced her mind back into focus on the present day. She needed some way to test, some way to prove that time was malleable. If she could prove that and find the limits of Novikov’s self-consistency principle, then she’d know what was and wasn’t possible. Only then could she dare to hope that perhaps Anna could be saved after all.

Elsa pulled herself back to standing and headed down the stairs, back towards the laboratory, when she felt a familiar tingling in her fingers.

 _No, no, no! It’s too soon! I need- I need to test this theory!_ she silently screamed in her mind, breaking into a run towards the oscillation chamber. Sparks began to trail off her, arcing onto nearby metal surfaces as she ran down the hallway. Just as she rounded the corner and saw Kai in the observation room…

… she vanished, the lab coat flying through the air without her.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

Hope refuses to die in Elsa’s heart, even though the science, by all rights, says it should.

Have you figured out what causes Elsa to travel through time yet?

* * *

### Join The Party

Enjoyed this story? Want to meet fellow readers and discuss? Join the Elsanna Shenanigans community on Discord at discord.gg/TU9NpnH (copy and paste that URL)

As always, please review, kudos, comment, like, follow, all that good stuff. I appreciate it.


	9. I Don't Want to Miss a Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don't care that we're sisters. I know what I feel, Elsa - true love."

_Warnings: substantial age gap, sibling incest_

# Episode 8: I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing

 _Eagle Valley, Indiana, 1998_ _Elsa is 42 and 18, Anna is 15_

Idina Menzel’s “O Holy Night” was the first, albeit muffled, sound that greeted Elsa as she materialized in the dark. As the final sparks of lightning faded away, she struggled to get her bearings. Wherever she was, it was musty smelling, and there was Christmas music playing below her. _Attic. I’m in an attic._ She closed her eyes and counted to twenty, trying to acclimate to the darkness.

When she looked around again, she recognized the dimly lit basement with a sliver of light trickling in from the attic vent. _Back at my parents’ house. At least I know where the clothes are._ She turned around and found a couple of trunks nestled against the wall. She opened the first one and found mostly piles of random stuff - a blanket, some silly hats. _Clearly Anna’s stuff._ Elsa tried the second trunk and found all her blue silk gloves from when she went through a phase as a teenager. Pulling out the shelf, she dug down to find piles of her old clothing and sheepishly realized absolutely none of it would even come close to fitting her decades later.

She turned and found one of her mother’s trunks, opened it, and was rewarded by a stack of mom jeans and billowy white blouses. _Beats being naked, anyway_ , she thought as she dressed. Her next challenge was to escape the attic undetected; their family home had a pulldown staircase that unfolded from the ceiling of the second floor hallway. Opening the attic was neither quiet nor subtle. She wracked her brain for alternatives, but there was only one realistic way out of the attic.

Just as she realized she might have to wait until nightfall to sneak out, a smoke detector on the first floor went off. Elsa listened and heard multiple footfalls scrambling downstairs, and took advantage of the distraction to quickly open the attic door, jump down, and close it without slamming it. Breathing a sigh of relief, she debated where to hide next, and headed for her old room.

Only to find her younger self sitting on the bed, head buried in a textbook, a pair of simple black headphones over the exact same French braid she wore as an adult. An oversize MIT sweatshirt and plaid pajama bottoms hinted at her preference for comfort over any kind of style as she studied.

Elsa smirked and closed the door gently, then crept up behind her younger self and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Anna, not now, please. I’m trying to st- ACK!” her younger self rocketed off the bed in fright.

Elsa shushed her 18-year old self and grinned. “Hi! It’s… been a while since we’ve seen each other. Sorry about the surprise.” She sat down on the creaky spring mattress bed, nostalgia welling up inside her. “Oh wow… I miss this bed.”

College student Elsa looked at her older self in confusion. “The last time I saw you was… eight years ago. What… where have you been?”

Elsa looked at herself and remembered. At 18, she was enrolled at MIT and would graduate early, in another year. She’d be in her junior year and already starting to explore quantum physics, though not to the extent she threw herself into it after Anna’s death in 6 years’ time.

“It’s a lot to explain, Elsa, but I’ll try.” Over the next hour, she quietly talked through the nuts and bolts of the experiment, omitting her motivation behind it and instead diving into the science of it. Her younger self leaned forward eagerly, lapping up the story and scientific details like a cat at a bowl of cream, asking copious questions along the way. Elsa laughed at many of the questions she’d asked herself during her years of research; her younger self was just as sharp and inquisitive.

After the explanation ended, younger Elsa stared at her older doppelganger for a pregnant pause while wringing her hands together. “I uh… Elsa, can… can I ask you something? Something… sensitive?” she stuttered, cheeks and ears aflame.

“Of course,” Elsa said, laying a reassuring hand on her younger self’s shoulder. “You can tell me anything. I mean, I’m literally you, so it’s not like it’s a secret to anyone else. What is it?”

Younger Elsa sighed. “Okay… here goes. I love Anna. She’s my sister, and even though she can be a pain in the butt sometimes, she’s still my sister and my best friend.” She took a deep, nervous breath and looked down at her hands. “But lately… lately, she’s been different.”

Elsa arched an eyebrow, encouraging her younger self to continue. She’d loved Anna, but hadn’t ever described her as a best friend in their teenage years. The teenage years were when they really started to drift apart, especially as Anna chose more and more questionable relationships and started down the road of substance abuse. Hope continued to struggle against the jail cell she’d turned her heart into.

Her younger self continued. “Things have been getting stranger the last couple of years. Anna has been much more… clingy? That’s the best way I can explain it. She’s been weirdly affectionate, hugging me and stealing little kisses whenever she can. She never used to do that - I mean, she’d always follow me around and ramble, which was cute. Now though, she’s doing this new stuff. Just last week she asked if we could have a sleepover in my room - in my bed! Not- not that I don’t appreciate her or anything, it’s just… really weird. It’s almost like she’s, I don’t know, pretending to be like a girlfriend or something?”

Elsa nodded. “That… was not my experience with her back then either. I wonder what ch-“ She froze, horrified, as all the blood drained out of her face. “Oh. Oh no. No, no, no… oh God. Elsa… I might… I might be the cause of this.”

It was younger Elsa’s turn to throw the inquisitive look. “What do you mean? How could you have done anything to influence this? You aren’t exactly a regular around these parts, stopping by every few years.”

Elsa thought back to her last visit. After Anna had left her Minidisc player behind, Elsa had taken it, sat on her favorite boulder, and poured her heart out in a recording she made on the device. She told Anna how proud she was of her, how much she loved her, how she was the driving impetus behind her career, how she thought of her every day. Looking back, she’d intended for it be the highest of sisterly devotions, but… to a young, eager teenage mind, she could see how her words could easily have been misinterpreted as romantic.

She explained as much to her younger self, who nodded in agreement. “That… would explain a lot. Anna used to use that thing sparingly but a few years ago she became inseparable from it. One time, she misplaced it for a day and I thought she was going to have a complete breakdown. I’ve never seen her so distraught. So… you think she might love me… like that,” she said, fidgeting in her chair uncomfortably.

“I’m so sorry, Elsa. I never- please believe me, I never wanted her to think of you - of us - in that way.” Elsa patted her younger self on the back and chuckled kindly. “I’ll see what I can do to… um, clean up my mess.”

“Don’t-” younger Elsa interrupted quickly, “don’t hurt her feelings. She means well and it’s not like it’s hurting anything, okay?” She looked down again, wringing her hands once more. “I… I like having a sister who likes me. I, uh, I don’t have many friends.”

“I know, Elsa. I know all too well. When I was growing up, I didn’t have any friends. You’re… lucky to have Anna. I didn’t, not really. By this time, we… didn’t get along much. And I don’t want to ruin that for you, so I’ll be gentle with her.” Elsa stood up and moved towards the door.

“Three and one.”

She turned towards her younger self, confused. “I’m sorry?”

“Three knocks, wait, then one knock. It’s our code so that we know it’s one of us and not Mama or Papa,” younger Elsa grinned with the slightest hint of mischief turning up one of the corners of her mouth.

“Got it.”

* * *

Tap, tap, tap.

Tap.

Elsa gently knocked on the door and waited. A few moments of quiet rustling, then Anna opened the door a crack, Aerosmith’s love ballad playing softly in the background.

And squealed in delight.

“ELSA! I mean, Big Elsa! Oh my god, I haven’t seen you in years!” she exclaimed, pulling Elsa into her room and wrapping her in a vice-like hug. “How- you haven’t changed at all! You look just like you did on the field back in middle school,” Anna gushed, running her hands up and down Elsa’s arms.

“It’s too complicated to get into the math behind it all, but from my point of view, I saw you on the fields yesterday,” she smiled. “How have you been, Anna?”

Anna flopped gracelessly back onto her bed with a giggle, auburn hair spilling over the purple duvet cover. “I’ve been… I’ve been good, Elsa. Really, really good. A lot has changed since you visited me last. I- I took your advice. I started asking you - my sister, I mean, for help with stuff at school and you were right. She really did want to help me. She… she really cares about me!”

Elsa grinned. “I told you so. She loves you and cares about you, just like I do.”

“Can… can I ask you some questions?” the redhead asked nervously.

“I was about to say the exact same thing. We finish each others’-”

“Sandwiches!” Anna interrupted.

Elsa tilted her head, confused. “Sandwiches? What- that makes no sense at all, where did that come from?”

“Oh, there’s this kid in my class who likes to talk to me. I think he’s got a crush on me or something, but Elsa - my Elsa - said he’s bad news, so I don’t talk to him too much. But he says weird stuff like that all the time,” Anna blurted out, propping herself up against the headboard.

“Which kid?”

“Oh, maybe you remember him, Hans Westergaard.”

Dark clouds swept over Elsa’s features like a storm front as anger surged in her heart. Hans Westergaard was indeed bad news; Anna would get involved with him more seriously in a couple of years and get Anna not only her first arrest, but addicted to her first illegal drugs. She’d been powerless to stop him; Anna wouldn’t listen to her back then.

“Yeah… listen to your sister. She’s right about him. He’s not going to be good news for anyone,” she muttered, sitting down on the bed next to Anna. “Anyway… what were the questions you were going to ask?”

Anna grinned and pulled out a marble composition notebook from under her pillow. “So… I found the recording you left me on my Minidisc player and listened to it a few times.” She watched Elsa’s eyebrow arch and corrected herself, “Okay, a lot of times. I eventually wrote down everything you said because it was the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me in my entire life, and I wanted to ask about a few of the things you were talking about.”

She turned the notebook a couple of pages. “When you said I was the driving impetus of your career, what did you mean by that?”

Elsa took a deep breath. This would be a significant test of whether she could change the past or not. Would telling Anna the total truth alter the past, or would the universe simply realign, leading to the same outcome in the years ahead?

“What I meant by that is…” she exhaled, a tear welling up in her eyes, “Anna, you… you died.” She flinched as soon as the words came out of her mouth.

Anna gasped at the pronouncement, but didn’t say anything else, just stared intently at Elsa as the seconds ticked by.

“You died twenty years ago from my point of view, from where I’m from. And… before you died, we had a fight. A big one. You and I said some pretty harsh things to each other,” she choked back a sob, “and those were the last words we ever spoke to each other. You told me you hated me, that I was always trying to control your life, and I said you were an idiot who needed to grow up before you got yourself into serious trouble that Mama and Papa’s money and influence couldn’t get you out of. I- I’m so sorry, Anna. I was so angry, so scared of losing you that I p-pushed you away.”

Anna leaned over and hugged Elsa around the shoulders. “Elsa… you haven’t done that yet, at least not to me. I mean, I forgive you, I guess, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Elsa completely lost control of herself, sobbing into Anna’s shoulder. After a few minutes of relentless crying, she managed to catch her breath. “Anna, you- you have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear that, waited for a chance to ask your forgiveness.”

“Twenty years, I’m guessing,” Anna smiled softly, rubbing small circles into Elsa’s palm. She looked down at Elsa’s hand intently. “How… umm, how did I die?”

“Car accident,” Elsa murmured. “You and your boyfriend were out at a Panic at the Disco concert, and on your way back home, a drunk driver in some kind of large vehicle crossed over the yellow line and crashed into you, knocking you off the road and into a tree. You…” she took a deep breath, wringing her hands tightly, “died almost immediately, thrown from the car. Your boyfriend survived. No one ever found the driver of the other vehicle - it was a hit and run.”

Anna exhaled for a long moment, settling her nerves. It wasn’t every day you got to hear about your own death. Once her heart stopped racing and her stomach stopped lurching, she looked down at her notebook. “Okay… you said you think of me every day?”

Elsa bit her lower lip and nodded. “Every single day, Anna. For years, it was guilt. So much guilt for pushing you away, for making you feel like you weren’t good enough for me. For… for saying things to you in anger that were lies. And then once I’d gotten past it, I started thinking about time travel, about finding a way to go back in time and see you one last time. So yes, every day. That’s what I meant about the impetus for my career. Finding a way to see you one last time, to apologize, to make things right. I- I didn’t know I’d get more than one chance.”

“I think about you every day too, Elsa. Like, not in the same way as you, obviously, because you’re way smarter than me and I haven’t even taken physics in school, and you’re literally making new physics every day, and changing the rules of science, and I can’t do any of that. I mean, what is time anyway? Is it just our imagination? Can I go back in time and accidentally kill myself? Could-”

Elsa grabbed her sister’s hands to interrupt her rambling. “Anna! Slow down. There’s a lot coming out all at once,” she grinned, amused. Some things never change. “Now, what were you saying about thinking about me every day?”

A vivid blush overtook Anna’s cheeks and ears. “I, uh, I- um- IthinkIfellinlovewithyouinsixthgradelisteningtoyou,” she blurted.

“Say that again - at maybe half speed?”

“Elsa! This is so- so… embarrassing! Okay, listen, do you promise not to laugh at me? I… I think… I fell in love with you in sixth grade, listening to you. The recording you left me on my Minidisc player, remember? I… I’ve never heard someone speak to me with so much love for me like you did, not even Mama and Papa. You told me so much about how wonderful you thought I was, how kind, how beautiful I was… how could I not be in love with you?”

Anna got up from the bed and started to slowly pace. “I listened to you every morning when I got up, every night when I went to bed. I fell in love with you so hard because you are this amazing, smart, sexy, brilliant scientist who bent the laws of reality just to come see me, a kid!” She turned to face her sister’s elder doppleganger. “You’re everything to me, Elsa, everything good I could ever want in life. You- you’re my love.”

Time stood still for Elsa. Anna didn’t just have a normal teenage crush on her. She had fallen for Elsa, heart and soul. _Oh, boy. Well, if there were ever proof that the past can be changed, this is certainly it_ , she thought grimly. _How do I fix this? How do I not break her heart?_

She recalled her memories of the Anna she grew up with in this time period. At 15, Anna was sneaking out at nights, hanging out with an unruly group of teenagers. She’d come home smelling like cheap beer and cigarettes; once, Elsa had confronted her and Anna had drunkenly slapped her across the face after screaming that Elsa had no idea what it was like to not be popular or accepted because Anna wasn’t a genius like her older sister. Almost 30 years later, Elsa could still feel the sting of that slap.

This Anna was nothing like the one she’d grown up with. She shook with nervousness, her thoughts roiling. How could she let her down easily, avoid ruining the relationship between them? “Anna, that’s… that’s so sweet of you. It really is. And yes, I do love you- as my sister. Seeing you alive again has been the greatest experience I could have ever asked for, and every moment with you is a treasure to me. But you… you can’t be in love with me like that… romantically.”

Anna’s face fell immediately. “But- but why not? You’re perfect, you’re- you’re not really the same person as my sister. You’re- you’re older! You’re from a different time and place!” Tears welled up in her eyes. “Are… are you not single? Is there already someone in your life?”

Elsa weighed her answer. It would be so easy to tell her a lie, to say yes, to let her down easy, but the guilt of lying to Anna about anything when she could vanish at any second was overwhelming. _I couldn’t bear it if my last words to her are a lie… again._ “N-no. No, Anna, there’s no one like that in my life.”

“So why can’t it be me, then?” she pleaded.

“Because we’re sisters! We’re flesh and blood sisters and any kind of- of- romantic entanglement would be just… wrong, Anna! That and I’m almost 30 years older than you,” she nearly shouted, folding her arms around her middle. Her stomach sank, churning with fear. How could she navigate this?

“I don’t care that we’re sisters. I know what I feel, Elsa - true love.”

“Anna, what do you know about true love?” she asked softly, looking down at the floor.

Anna’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “More than you think, Elsa. I know what it means to have someone cross the universe, cross time itself for you. I know what it means to have someone looking after you like a guardian angel, maybe not there often, but always there when it matters most. I know what it feels like to have someone tell you they love you every single day, over and over, and mean it.”

She sat back down on the bed next to Elsa, who succeeded in not flinching at her proximity. “Most of all, I now know what it means to have someone literally cheat death for you. I love you, Elsa. I am in love with you, and I am not ashamed to say that. I don’t care that you’re my sister or that you’re almost three times my age. All I care about is that you’ve dedicated your life to me. That’s true love.”

Elsa struggled to maintain her composure. Anna wasn’t wrong. She’d dedicated every waking moment for 20 years to seeing her again, and now that she knew the past could be changed, she’d dedicate whatever else it took, however long it took, to save Anna from her fate. Did that mean she loved her in any other way than a sister would?

She looked up to see Anna’s patient stare, waiting for her to speak. Elsa cleared her throat. “I… don’t disagree with what you’ve said. I- yes, I have dedicated a lifetime to being able to see you one more time, to make amends for what I said. But I… I can’t say it’s romantic love.”

“Why not, Elsa?” she begged.

Elsa hung her head. “All… all I know is how to shut people out, Anna. I- I’ve never been married. I’ve never even been in a serious relationship. I shut people out for a decade after your death from guilt, and I shut people out for another decade, focusing only on my research. Only on a way to get back to you.”

Anna cupped her sister’s cheek gently. “You don’t know what true love feels like.”

The blonde shook her head wordlessly. “I- I’m afraid not.”

“But you’re living it every day, Elsa. What you did for me is true love.” Anna said this with the boldness of youth, her eyes burning with conviction.

Elsa stared down at her hands, feeling a familiar tingling beginning. “Oh no. Anna - I don’t have much time. I’m being pulled back.”

“Take me with you,” Anna breathed, hugging Elsa close.

“No! Anna, I can’t. I don’t know what the consequences would be of you just vanishing, but they could be severe. Maybe even life-ending. Please, you have to let me go,” she begged, pushing at her sister’s arms. The sparks grew brighter and bigger, beginning to walk up and down her limbs.

Anna nodded sadly. “All right. I- I trust you. I believe you. Come back to me, Elsa.” Before Elsa could react, Anna cupped her sister’s chin with her palm and firmly kissed her. “Come back to me.”

Elsa’s eyes bulged at the boldness of the act, and just as she was about to scold Anna, she vanished, leaving Iduna’s clothes on the floor.

Anna swooned at the memory of Elsa’s soft lips, gathered up the clothes and folded them, and sat for a long moment inhaling the scent, the trace of her. A wry smile appeared on her lips as she settled on something in her heart, then opened the door to her room. She wandered down the hall and knocked on her sister’s door.

“Hey Elsa… can we talk?”

* * *

## Author’s Notes

15-year old Anna has indeed fallen head over heels for the 42 year old Elsa, and as the responsible adult, Elsa has done exactly the right thing - but there will be consequences. In her time travels, Elsa has set in motion something she never planned for, and now we’ve reached the Elsanna part of our journey.

* * *

### Join The Party

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	10. The Longest Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "That's... even though we've proven some changes can happen, Anna is... is still gone. I come back here and it's as though I never went - she's still... dead. The river of fate... still leads to the same place. I- I can't save her after all."

# Episode 9: The Longest Time

_Groom Lake, Nevada, 2022_

Familiar sparks danced across the floor of the military base as Elsa returned to her own time, reappearing just outside the observation room. She picked herself up off the floor and walked into the observation chamber, wordlessly taking a lab coat off the coat rack and buttoning it around her naked body.

“Ah, Doctor Beckett. Just on time, according to my calculations,” Kai chuckled, tapping notes into his tablet as he stood up from one of the desks. “I predicted a return within 39 to 41 minutes, and you were kind enough to make it 40 minutes even.”

“Gooshie, I’ve proven it! We’ve proven it,” she said, turning to her colleague with an earsplitting grin. “Novikov only applies to paradoxes. We’ve changed the past! That means… that means I could save her!” she squealed. She sat down in a chair and recounted all the details about Anna that had changed on her last leap into the past as Kai furiously took notes.

Kai nodded his head, tapping on the tablet as he watched Kristoff meander back into the observation room. “This is extraordinary, Doctor Beckett. The implications of this are stunning. Time is… fluid, I dare say.”

“What’s that?” Kristoff asked with a tired sigh, collapsing into a chair with his usual cup of coffee. “What happened this time around?”

“I changed the past,” she said proudly.

“Wait… so does that mean you could go back and, I don’t know, assassinate Hitler?” he asked, his eyes widening at the implications.

Kai shook his head. “While the principles we’re dealing with may allow for changes to the past, I would find that scenario unlikely. For one thing, we speculate that these quantum superpositions would only allow someone to travel within the span of their lifetime.”

Kristoff tilted his head, puzzled. “Still… you could do a lot of damage, couldn’t you? I mean, you could shoot… I dunno, Gorbachev and prevent the fall of the Soviet Union?”

Elsa jumped in. “The theory is that time is like a river. You could take a cup or even a bucket of water out of it, but the river will still flow in the same direction. Take out Gorbachev, and someone else takes his place and keeps the timeline intact.”

She stopped abruptly, looking at the oscillator chamber, tears beginning to form as her own words crashed into her like a tidal wave, the realization that her hope was misplaced. “That’s… even though we’ve proven some changes can happen, Anna is… is still gone. I come back here and it’s as though I never went - she’s still… dead. The river of fate… still leads to the same place. I- I can’t save her after all.”

Abruptly, Elsa turned and fled the observation room, choking back sobs. Kai moved to the door before Kristoff put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll take care of it, Gooshie.”

* * *

Kristoff walked down one of the halls in search of Elsa, but the labyrinth of the facility worked against him. After checking numerous different places, he finally heard quiet snuffling off one of the power conduit chambers almost half an hour later. Elsa was in tears, curled up in a ball at the end of a utility corridor. He approached her cautiously, as a caretaker might near a wounded, frightened animal. “Hey.”

She looked up, eyes red. “Leave me alone. Please, Kristoff, just… leave me alone. I- I can’t. I’ve failed. I thought I might be able to save her but I’ve failed.”

“How have you failed, Elsa? You’ve been saying this whole time that time was fixed, that you were basically going back as a tourist. Then you come back saying time can be changed, and then you say it can’t be again because it’s a river or something.” He sat down next to her, bumping his shoulder into hers. “How is that any different than when this all began? You haven’t lost anything. Literally nothing has changed.”

He sighed. “Look, I get it. I’m not a genius like you, but I get it. You signed onto this project because it was the only way to get the funding and facilities to build this crazy thing. I know that, and it was a good deal for both of us. And I knew something crazy like saving Anna had to be part of the reason you were doing it. We threw mad money at you and you didn’t even blink until we said you would be able to do the project entirely your way, no exceptions. I didn’t know you’d actually built a goddamn time machine, but I knew something was up.”

She began to weep softly again. “And yet… here we are. Twenty years of my life, ten years of research, and all I’ve proved is that I can find astonishingly expensive and complicated ways to break my own heart again. I… I did get to see her again, and I thought that w-would make me feel better. She- Kristoff, she forgave me, and I feel worse than I did before!”

“But why?”

“Because… I started to hope again, Kristoff.”

Kristoff put his arm around her shoulders gently. “So the changes you’ve made… they exist, but she still dies?”

Elsa nods.

“Are they for the better?”

Another silent nod.

“I had a staff sergeant once who was kicking my ass to help me get ready for the AFT a couple of years ago - the Fitness Test - and he said something that stuck with me. Sarge said, _Exercise may not add years to your life, but it adds life to your years_.” Kristoff smiled warmly at the memory. “Maybe that’s what you’re doing. Maybe you can’t change her fate, but you’re helping her make the most of her years?”

Elsa sighed, sniffling. “I… suppose. That seems like cold comfort, though. I… I thought that I might have had a chance after all. I … I pulled the rug out from under my own feet.”

“Listen, there’s something else I need to ask you, Elsa,” Kristoff said after a few long moments, looking at her. “We’ve been friends for a while now, haven’t we?”

“Yes, we have.”

“And you trust me?” he asked, watching her carefully.

“As much as I trust anyone in a super-secret military project where the ultimate aim is to kill a bunch of people, yes. You’re a good man, Kristoff.”

“You knew, didn’t you?” Kristoff looked at Elsa, a frown marring his expression. “When I asked you after your first leap about what happened… you knew from the beginning that this wasn’t just some Star Trek device. You were building a time machine all along.”

Elsa nervously wrung her hands. “I- I did. But I didn’t mislead you, truly. The device will work exactly as we agreed. Your boss gets his superweapon, you get to look awesome before the brass… everyone gets what they want. It’s just that it had an extra feature I didn’t tell you about. And it wasn’t out of malice. I truly had no idea whether or not any of this would work.”

Kristoff ran his hand through his hair. “I know. And that’s why I’m not mad at you. You did what you promised, I can’t ask for more than that. But… you’re sure you can’t change history with it, that the timeline will stay intact?”

“Fairly sure, why?”

“It’s just… I’ve done some things in my own past that I’m ashamed of, and… I was wondering if I could go back and fix them somehow, too,” he muttered, looking at his shined, oiled black boots.

Elsa put a hand gently on his shoulder. “I’m fairly sure that unless it’s something minor, you probably can’t change it. And if you want to go back in time to fix it, I’m guessing it’s something not minor.” She coughed gently. “Is… this… what led you back to taking pills again?”

Kristoff turned red, ashamed, and hung his head. His ghosts clearly tormented him more than he let on. “Yeah. I… I did some stuff, pretty bad stuff and all this talk of fixing your past mistakes… it really threw me for a loop, brought up some really bad old memories.”

“Weselton hasn’t been breathing down your neck, has he?”

A guilty head shake. “I’m… I’m sorry for lying about that to you, Elsa. It- I wasn’t ready to say anything in front of the others.”

“I know all about guilt from the past, Kristoff. Do you want to tell me about it, get it off your chest?”

The burly soldier put his head in his hands. “No. No, not right now. Maybe… maybe someday. I can’t talk about it, not now. But I swear, Elsa, that was my only bottle. I’m going to get myself straightened out again, I promise.” Determination replaced shame on his face as he looked at one of his only friends.

“All right. Thank you for coming to find me. Wanna get the crew together and grab some dinner?” she offered, standing up.

“Yeah,” he nodded, clambering to his feet, “That’s a good idea. And hey, Elsa?”

She turned, looking back at him with a curious expression.

“If anyone can figure out how to save your sister, you will. Do what you have to, figure it out - because if you can fix your past…” he smiled sheepishly, “…maybe you can help me fix mine.”

* * *

The next morning, Elsa walked from the barracks to the laboratory, running into Kristoff on the way over who looks like a dog’s breakfast.

“Rough night, Colonel?” she teased him as she sipped coffee from a thermos. She felt substantially warmer now with some Air Force sweatpants on; the repeated trips back and forth through time meant keeping her apparel easy to don.

He groaned. “I… ugh. We might have celebrated too hard last night at dinner. My head is killing me.”

They both badged into the laboratory complex and headed for the observation room. “Let’s go find Gerda and see if she can fix you something,” Elsa chuckled, hiding her laughter behind her hand. She’d only indulged in a glass of wine at the on-base tavern; despite being in the middle of the Nevada desert, they’d had one of her favorite Canadian ice wines in stock thanks to the unusually large number of VIPs that came in and out of Groom Lake. Kristoff had been drinking substantially more at dinner.

As they walked into the observation room, Dr. Beeks took one look at Kristoff and opened her medic kit, rummaged around for a moment, and handed him two ibuprofen and a glass of water.

He groaned quietly as he took the medication. “Thank you, Gerda. Ugh… I can’t remember anything after we left.”

Gerda tsked him in her best doctor’s bedside manner. “Colonel, I’ve been talking to you about your alcohol consumption for some time now. You have improved over the last six months, but you still behave as though you were a 22-year old second lieutenant. No offense, sir, but you are well past those days.”

Elsa suppressed a laugh as she examined the readings on her workstation, Kai handing her the most recent collected data. She’d been on the receiving end of a few of Gerda’s corrective ministrations herself. At least the good doctor was as kind as she was honest. Midway through a calculation, Elsa recalled Kristoff’s words and murmured, “…can’t remember…” She swiftly turned her desk chair to Kai, who was still absorbed in his work.

“Kai!” she nearly shouted, excitedly.

The portly scientist jumped, nearly flinging his tablet in the air. “Yes, Doctor Beckett!”

“Can’t remember! Why?”

Kai scrunched up his face. “I-I’m not quite sure what you’re asking me, Doctor Beckett.”

“Why can’t I remember any of the changes made in the timeline? Clearly they’ve happened - I still remember Anna as a rebellious teenager, drinking and smoking and partying. I definitely do not remember her falling-”, she choked back her words instantly, coughing. Elsa blushed, thinking about Anna’s embarrassing revelation the previous day, and managed to catch herself. “-falling off a- a boulder and hurting herself. Why don’t I remember the timeline changes? For that matter, why do I still remember the unchanged past?”

Kai, completely missing Elsa’s stumble, stared intently at his console. “Perhaps… perhaps it is the tachyonic field itself, Doctor Beckett. Bosons carry force and they’re still saturating you, though only at 60% of the strength they were after the first oscillator discharge. Perhaps they are somehow insulating you from change.” He stood up and began to pace the room. “In theory… you sent yourself through time using the photonic cannon. That much energy perhaps acted like a camera taking a photograph, not just of you, but of time itself around you, and-”

“And it’s insulating me from timeline changes,” she finished. “So when the tachyonic field finally fades away-”

“So will your knowledge of the unchanged past,” Kai completed, nodding. “That would seem to be the logical conclusion, Doctor.”

Elsa stood up and started pacing, absentmindedly sipping her coffee. Her mind was buzzing like a hornet’s nest right after a child had thrown a rock at it. If the tachyonic field was preventing the timeline changes she was making from catching up to her, then did she dare to hope that she could save Anna after all? She’d just visited Anna at 15 and found things very different. What if the changes she was making had bigger and bigger ripple effects?

She thought back to another pivotal moment in their relationship, when Anna started dating that piece of human garbage, Hans. Anna had been a senior in high school and by 17 was a hellion. Her partying only increased when her relationship with Hans deepened, who also got her smoking and eventually addicted to some nasty stuff. But on her last trip, Anna hadn’t seemed to have been partying very much… so there was definitely a chance for Elsa to keep pushing against fate. _If only I had the ability to control how I transited through time_ , she thought.

She looked across the workstations in the control room. “Kai… do we have any sense yet of how this time travel works? I just seem to disappear and appear at random.”

Kai shook his head, holding out the tablet for her to see. “Your… temporal incursions, if you will, seem to be at random. I have not been able to find any data that would suggest it is conscious or under your control, Doctor Beckett.”

Sure enough, the data he was showing offered no solace. She couldn’t see any time of day, duration of trip, nothing that would offer a hint as to why she just kept popping in and out of time. Two of her leaps had been within minutes of each other, another two after sleep.

“I just don’t get it, Kai. What is it that decides when in Anna’s life I pop in or not?” She looked down at her hands, a familiar tingling starting. “Kai… turn on your instruments. I think I’m about to leap again.”

The scientist immediately began waving probes near Elsa as sparks began to race across her body, aiming them at her head. “Ready, Doctor Beckett!” he said, raising his voice as the cacaphony from the electrical discharges increased. Another wave of blue-white light passed over Elsa, and she was off to the past again, her thermos hitting the floor with a loud crack, her lab coat and sweatpants following much more quietly.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

We’re starting to understand a bit more about Kristoff. He’s not just a cardboard cutout military guy whose sole purpose in the story is to be the face of the military. In fact, if you go back to Chapter 1, we’ve known part of his story all along.

As for Elsa’s jumping through time, she and Kai are wrong. She’s in control of it. She just doesn’t know it yet.

* * *

### Join The Party

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	11. Shape of My Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But... I've sort of fallen in love," Anna blushed, "W-with someone else."

_Warnings: attempted sexual assault, graphic violence_

# Episode 10: Shape of My Heart

 _Bloomington, Indiana, 2000_ _Elsa is 42 and 20, Anna is 17_

The clattering of pots and pans gave Elsa the first hint of her arrival. As the electricity receded, she heard the din of kitchen noise. _Not a home_ , she thought, seeing the industrial off-white tile on the floor and the smell of cleaners punching her in the nose. _Cafeteria? Mess hall?_ She knelt down, noting the stainless steel and aluminum surfaces everywhere, and saw a door with a darkened window to her right. Carefully, she walked to the door, seeing it was an office of some kind, and opened it silently.

 _Bingo_ , she thought, seeing several unlocked storage lockers. She found some food service uniforms and put one on, noting with amusement that the black outfit and apron made her look just as much like a ninja as it did a line cook. She decided against the apron and buttoned up the single-breasted black jacket, then found some plain black leather work shoes.

Once attired, she began to make her way around. Definitely an institution of some kind… then she smacked herself on the forehead. Her apron had a Sheraton logo on the lapel - she’s at a hotel. Elsa made her way down the corridor and into one of the lounge areas. The whole place looked familiar to her, but she couldn’t tell if it was because every hotel looked alike after enough business travel, or if she knew this one specifically.

In the foyer, she got her answer on the “Events of the Day” board: EVHS Senior Prom. The date on the board spelled out in cheap plastic lettering was May, 2000 - Anna’s senior prom, and a wave of memories came crashing back. Anna’s senior prom had been an unmitigated disaster. Elsa had seen it firsthand, having been home for summer break after completing her first graduate semester at MIT.

Anna had worn a beautiful purple and green ball gown and played the part of an enchanting princess when she left home, and everything went to hell after that. She had gotten into some kind of fight at the prom, supposedly punching another girl - she never did clearly say why - and then getting absolutely trashed with her piece of shit boyfriend, Hans. By 1 AM of her prom night, Elsa had to go down to the Bloomington Police Department to retrieve her very drunk sister and the tattered remains of her gown. She’d been arrested for public drunkenness and indecency but thankfully, she had been a minor and wasn’t charged with anything at the time. They’d fought bitterly the entire drive home.

Elsa shook her head, forcing the painful memories of that night away, as she made her way towards the Grand Ballroom. She looked at herself in the mirror; without the apron and hat, her outfit looked surprisingly formal, formal enough that she could pass for a well-dressed guest, albeit a slightly eccentric one.

She opened the door to the ballroom and immediately walked into a wall of sound as Green Day’s “Time of Your Life” blared from the hotel speakers and teenage couples swayed awkwardly beneath the crystal chandeliers suspended from the drop-tile ceiling. Elsa wrinkled her nose at the too-warm room filled with the conflicting scents of lust, angst, and desperation. As she made her way to the back of the room, she saw a familiar purple and green gown, its occupant leaning against one of the walls.

“Hey, Princess,” she said with a smile, approaching her sister.

Anna’s eyes bulged. “Elsa! ELSA! You’re here!” She sprang from the wall and crushed Elsa in a fast, furious hug. “Oh my god, I haven’t seen you in forever!” Anna relaxed her grip long enough to kiss Elsa on the cheek. “How- how have you been? How long has it been?”

Elsa smiled. “I saw you yesterday, from my perspective,” she chuckled, unsure what to do with her hands besides maintain the hug. “How have YOU been?”

Anna pulled her to one of the tables and sat down, joyful glee on her face at seeing this Elsa. “I’ve been good. We’ve been good. You - I mean, my Elsa, and I have gotten really close the last couple of years, ever since…”

“You kissed me before I vanished?”

Anna’s blush did a fair imitation of the red plastic cup she was holding. “Y-yeah. My bad, sorry about that, I was just- um- I got caught up in the moment. I hope that didn’t make you totally flip out or anything,” she laughed nervously.

“It was certainly a surprise! So, um… are you…”

“Still in love with you?” Anna grinned. “Sort of? I mean, you’re still this amazing angel that appears out of nowhere, like some kind of magical superhero time traveler, and I think that’s so amazing. And you love me enough to keep coming back for me when I need you the most…”

Elsa smiled. “But?”

“But… I’ve sort of fallen in love,” Anna blushed, “W-with someone else.”

“That… that’s good, Anna. That’s wonderful!” Elsa breathed a sigh of relief. The thought of Anna chasing after her was too much for her, even after a night’s sleep on the matter. For Anna it had been a couple of years, but for her the revelation was literally yesterday, and she hadn’t come to terms with it at all. “So who’s the lucky-”

“Hey babe, wanna-”

Elsa narrowed her eyes at person interrupting her, a pimply-faced, overly-muscled, red-haired jock with beady green eyes and absolutely ridiculous sideburns carrying two red plastic cups of whatever the hotel was serving minors. _Hans Westergaard. Oh lord, please don’t tell me Anna’s fallen for this piece of shit._

“Whoa! Who’s your hot friend, Anna?” he exclaimed, staring unabashedly at Elsa’s chest.

Both women rolled their eyes. “Hans, sometimes, you’re a pig. Scratch that, most of the time, you’re a pig,” whipped Anna.

Hans threw up his hands. “Hey now, I was only pointing out the truth!” He winked at Elsa, who rolled her eyes again and sighed. “Anyway, I was gonna ask you if you wanted to go dance with the gang?”

Anna looked across the dance floor to see a gaggle of her friends flailing clumsily to NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye and eagerly went to join them, shouting “I’ll be riiiiight back, Elsa!” over her shoulder.

Elsa sighed. Why was her sister hanging out at all with Hans? He was responsible for so much of what went wrong later in her life. She contemplated what to tell Anna, how to reinforce that she needed to keep her distance from him, even if her friends didn’t.

She took a sniff of the punch that Hans had left behind, grimacing at the sugary, artificial scent. She sniffed it again, something bothering her, then took a sip and nearly spit it out. He had spiked it, and by the taste of it, spiked it with bottom-shelf liquor that on a good day could be used as window cleaner.

Elsa looked around for someone from the school and saw Principal Oaken watching the prom from the adult beverage cart with amusement. She picked up the cup and walked over to the massive man clad in a cheerful sweater, tapping him on the shoulder and holding the red cup out.

“Yes? How may I help you?” he said, confused as to why a strange woman was handing him a drink.

“Sorry, I’m… an employee here. I noticed that one of your students left this behind and I’m certain we are not serving alcoholic drinks to students,” she said, pushing the cup into his hands.

He sniffed it and recoiled. “Oh dear, that’s no good. Thank you, Miss…?”

“Arendelle.”

“Thank you, Miss Arendelle. You didn’t get a look at which particular student left this behind by chance, did you?” he asked as his eyes swept the room, looking for a mental list of troublemakers amidst the noise and chaos.

Elsa smiled. “Yes, a young man, probably five-foot eight or so, red hair, green eyes, and he had these… very noticeable sideburns…”

Oaken sighed. “Westergaard. That kid is such a pain in the… never mind. I’m sorry about this. Thank you, Miss Arendelle, for bringing this to my attention. Hoo hoo!” He motioned for one of the teachers nearby to come over and they conferred for a bit before the teacher went off into the crowd.

Elsa smiled and gave her leave of her old principal. She laughed ruefully to herself and wondered if she really looked that much older that he wouldn’t remember the valedictorian from a couple of years ago. Her hair had changed from the lightest blonde to pure white over the last two decades, but she didn’t think she’d changed THAT much. _I suppose he’d be looking for a 20 year old, not a 42 year old woman_ , she murmured to herself.

She stood up and wandered around the ballroom perimeter in search of her sister, avoiding collisions with uncoordinated high schoolers attempting to impress each other. _Thank god I never went to any of these growing up_ , she thought. Her life had always been academics, since she could remember, and being a child prodigy meant doing little else.

 _I wasn’t gone that long - where did she go_ , she wondered. _I’ve got to warn her that Hans is up to something, spiking her drink like that, the little asshole. I wonder how many she’s had_. Elsa looked at the clock on the wall - 11 PM. The prom would be winding down shortly; some students were already making their way to the door, obviously intending to continue the party elsewhere. She headed outside and looked around, the parking lot filled with buses and a few cars.

Elsa centered herself, remembering her years of jujutsu training she took while living in Oslo. She closed her eyes and breathed in the cool night air, extending her senses in every direction. In the distance, to her right, she heard what sounded like uncoordinated footsteps and scraping sounds, and bolted in pursuit.

All the way across the hotel’s enormous parking lot, near two parked schoolbuses, she spotted her sister and Hans, just as Hans was attempting to shove her into the backseat of a Toyota Corolla. As she ran closer, their voices became more clear.

“Hans, just get the fuck off me and leave me alone!” Anna’s voice, only slightly slurred, still rang out.

The sound of cloth ripping tore through the darkness. Elsa’s blood froze at the sound.

“Come on baby, you know you want to have a good time!”

A crack echoed through the evening air, the sound of a palm slapping a face. Elsa was almost to them, watching as Anna slapped Hans across the cheek.

Hans growled furiously and punched Anna in the face as retribution. She shrieked from the pain and fell backwards into the car, and Hans clambered after her gracelessly.

Just as he raised his fist to hit her again, he felt himself yanked out of the car by his collar and onto the pavement.

Elsa stood above him, hands in front of her, eyes ablaze with cold rage. “Leave. Her. Alone,” she seethed.

“Fuck you lady, this ain’t none of your business!” he shouted, scrambling to his feet.

“Stop it, Hans!” Anna shouted, emerging from the car with her hand covering a bloody nose and what would be a substantial black eye later. Elsa held out her arms, keeping Anna behind her.

“You friends with this bitch, Anna?” he scoffed. “Fine, I’m gonna teach her a lesson and then we’re gonna continue where we left off,” he hissed. Hans rolled up the sleeves of his tuxedo shirt, pulled back his fist, and swung a wild haymaker, intending to punch Elsa straight in the mouth.

His fist hit air.

Elsa easily stepped to the side of his clumsy punch and stomped her heel into the back of his calf, the pain causing his leg to crumple. As he started to fall, she hit him with a fast uppercut and a devastating hook punch to the side of his jaw, slamming him toward the ground and bouncing his head off the side of the Corolla on the way down.

Dazed, Hans growled wordlessly, rolling over and struggling to his knees. Just as he tried to push himself off the ground, Elsa stomped a heel into his ribs, the impact making a wet cracking sound as several of the bones broke. He doubled over and fell face first into the pavement from the pain, breaking a couple teeth in the process.

“Stay down if you know what’s good for you, you piece of shit,” she snarled at his prone form, her foot on his neck. “You don’t touch her, you don’t talk to her, you don’t look at her. If I catch you near her ever again… You. Will. Die.”

Elsa stood up and grabbed Anna by the arm, looking around the parking lot to see if anyone had observed the fight. “Let’s get out of here before there’s more trouble, okay?”

Anna nodded, still holding her face with her hand. A trickle of blood seeped between her fingers as her much older sister escorted her to the side entrance of the hotel and into one of the restrooms off the lobby.

After a few minutes of washing and cleaning up the blood, Anna looked almost back to normal, save for a badly torn gown plus the redness and swelling in her cheek. “I… thank you, Elsa. I should have listened to you.”

Elsa walked her gently to one of the lounges near the fitness center, on the opposite side of the hotel from the ballroom. “What do you mean, Anna?” she asked gently, sitting next to her on an absurdly overstuffed leather couch.

“You… last time you were here, you warned me to stay away from Hans. I guess… you were right. If you hadn’t been there tonight, he- he would have-”, she stumbled, words rapidly drowning in tears. The image of Hans’ leering face, the sodium parking lot lamps lighting him like a hellish demon, chilled her as her tears fell.

Elsa laid her arm across Anna’s trembling shoulders. “It’s okay, Anna. You- you’re okay. You’re going to be okay. We stopped him, and I doubt he’s going to try anything that dumb again. Especially if all his jock buddies found out he got beaten up by some middle-aged woman.”

Elsa’s stomach sank, wondering if Hans and Anna had… gotten together in the original timeline. She suppressed a gag at the thought, but another unpleasant thought reared its head like a hydra’s snakes.

“Anna…”

Her sister’s cries had reduced to the occasional snuffle, and Anna turned her head to look at Elsa.

“Did you… um, earlier, before everything… you said you had fallen in love with someone else…” she asked, hesitating. Did she really want the answer to this question?

“Yeah?”

“It… wasn’t Hans, was it?”

Anna’s laugh was a short, sharp bark. “AS IF! Oh my god no, Elsa. He- God no. He hangs out like a perv with my friends a lot at school, but we’re not even friends, much less going out. Fuck no, I’m not in love with him. After tonight, if I ever see him again, I’m going to punch him in the face.”

Elsa breathed an enormous sigh of relief. “Thank goodness for that. I was afraid you had somehow fallen for him.”

“Definitely not!” she snorted and giggled, sounding a bit like a pig with hiccups.

“Ok, so… if Hans isn’t your boyfriend, how were you planning on getting home tonight?”

Anna smiled and pulled open her little green clutch, fishing out a vivid pink Nokia 3310 phone. “I’ll just call… you!” she laughed. “And by you, I mean my Elsa, not you.” She took a minute to dial and asked her sister to come get her at the hotel.

Elsa contemplated her sister as she chatted on the phone. Got into a fight. Tattered gown. Hans. A version of her coming to pick her up and get everything sorted out after a tumultuous evening. All the pieces were there, but with a different outcome. Anna wasn’t totally smashed, and she wasn’t with Hans. Time seemed to be maintaining its general flow, but the specifics were changing. The thought gave her hope.

“Earth to Elsa!”

She started, not realizing she’d been so lost in her thoughts that Anna not only had finished her phone conversation but was vigorously waving a hand in front of her face.

“What were you thinking about there, Elsa? I really lost you there for a moment,” she giggled.

“Oh, sorry. Umm… well, I was thinking… so, if it’s not Hans you’re in love with, who is the lucky person?” Elsa leaned forward, her curiosity getting the better of her.

Anna immediately blushed hard, her face and ears turning red. She squirmed uncomfortably. “Uh… you… you don’t want me to answer that.”

“Why? You said earlier that you weren’t still in love with me,” Elsa said, puzzled at her sister’s reaction. “Were you… were you not telling the truth?”

“What? No, I swear, I was telling the truth. Even if I’d had a little bit of that special fruit punch. I was totally telling you the truth, Elsa,” she said louder than she’d intended to, her face and ears still red.

Elsa scratched her head. “Okay, I’m confused.”

Anna sighed and looked at her, as though expecting her to know the answer from her thoughts alone. “Elsa… I’m not in love with YOU, but… I’m in love with you,” she said bashfully.

“Now I’m really conf-” Realization dawned on her. “Oh. OH. You’re- oh. Does… does she know?”

“I’m not sure. I mean… I’m not the world’s most subtle person-”

Elsa broke out into a fit of coughing.

“Hey, you stinker! That was mean. Anyway, as I was saying, I’m not the most subtle person, but I haven’t told her to her face, if that’s what you mean,” Anna looked at her shoes as she muttered the latter part.

Elsa cleared her throat. “How… how long has this been a thing?”

Anna looked up at her with a weak smile. “Since the last time you left. Right after you vanished… I was so all over the place emotionally, I went to talk to her in her room. That was the start of it for me. She was so caring and understanding- just like you. Which, you know, makes total sense because she is you.”

“And she’s never reciprocated?”

“No, no she hasn’t, and not for a lack of effort on my part!” the redhead grinned saucily.

“Elsa?”

Both turned their heads at the familiar voice as Elsa’s 20-year old self walked in the hotel doors and had come to a dead stop in front of the two women.

“You got here super fast, sis!”

Younger Elsa broke from her surprise and ran over to Anna, hugging her. “Of course I did, you said you were hurt.” She immediately began inspecting Anna’s injuries. “You’re going to have one heck of a black eye tomorrow, Anna.”

Anna grinned. “I know, but this Elsa saved me, thank goodness. I don’t know what would have happened without her.” She gently rubbed the elder Elsa’s arm, sending shivers down the adult woman’s spine.

“Okay. Well, let’s get you home and cleaned up. Thank goodness Mama and Papa are away for the weekend.” Both Elsas helped Anna to her feet and to the younger’s car for the short drive back to their home.

* * *

“Hey.”

“Hey indeed, my younger self. Is Anna okay? Are you all right?” Elsa asked, looking at her youthful countenance with concern as she motioned for her to have a seat on the living room couch.

Younger Elsa exhaled, her shoulders relaxing and letting go the tension stored up in them. Despite her fatigue, she gracefully lowered herself to the couch next to her older self. “Anna’s asleep. The excitement of the evening wore her out. Me… I’m… not okay. Seeing Anna like that and then seeing you was such a shock. I- what she said in the car about what happened, I got so scared for her. How… how did you stop that?”

Elsa laughed quietly, running her fingers through her white hair. “When I turned 30, I moved to Oslo and started at the university there. I couldn’t study all the time, so I started taking martial arts on campus at first, in a self-defense and fitness class. After that semester, I joined the instructor’s school, a little-known school of jujutsu called Takagi Yoshin Ryu. I eventually ended up getting a few black belts in it.”

“A few?” gasped her younger self in wonder. “How many are there?”

“Well… technically, probably about 10. I only got four of them before I moved back to the States to start building the project that would lead me here, but I kept up with it. And as you heard tonight,” she smirked, “it comes in handy sometimes. So, something to look forward to for yourself in about 10 years.”

Younger Elsa nodded and stared into the distance, her eyes getting watery.

“What is it? What are you thinking?”

“I- if you hadn’t been there tonight… he- he- Anna would have been…” she stuttered, the thought of her sister being assaulted overwhelming her. Tears began to run down her cheeks. “What- what if Hans comes back, looking for revenge? What will I be able to do?”

Elsa wrapped her younger self in a warm hug. “Hey, hey, hey… that didn’t happen, okay. Anna is fine, she’s safe, and the only thing Hans is going to be looking for is his front teeth. Anna’s safe, Elsa, I promise. We kept her safe.”

“I couldn’t bear it if something happened to her. She and I have become so close the last few years, I don’t know what I would do without her,” she mumbled into her older self’s shoulder, tears beginning to slow.

Elsa thought back to her own life as her lookalike settled her nerves. She and Anna had been close when they were young, but drifted apart around the time that Anna had started drinking and partying, about two years prior to the time period she was in now. None of that had happened, and now Anna was incredibly close, so close that her younger self felt almost dependent on her?

“Elsa… how close?”

Her younger self looked up. “Hmm?”

“You said you’ve become so close with Anna. Just… how close are we talking?” she said curiously, looking down into the same sapphire eyes she saw in the mirror every morning.

Younger Elsa blushed. And blushed. And blushed so much that the tips of her ears were as red as Anna’s hair. “W-what do you mean? What are you-” she swallowed, nervous, “you suggesting?”

The older woman laid back in shock. Was her younger self smitten with her own sister? Was such a thing even possible? She’d never felt that way towards Anna growing up. “Are we… are you in love with Anna, Elsa?”

The younger girl hid her face in her hands and mumbled, still blushing furiously.

“What did you say, Elsa?” she asked softly.

“Y-yes. Yes, I’m in love with Anna. P-pl-please don’t tell her. She would be so hurt by it,” she choked.

Elsa burst into another coughing fit, suppressing her laughter. “Wh- how- what do you mean, she would be so hurt? Elsa, she loves you!”

Her younger self looked despondent. “Of course she loves me. I’m her SISTER. That’s the problem! I… sisters aren’t supposed to want to love each other like… like the way I feel about her. I’m disgusting! She would be disgusted by me,” she wept.

“It’s not my place to speak for her, but… she won’t be disgusted by you, Elsa. Be- be honest with her. The Anna I knew growing up was so hurt by me shutting her out all the time. Our studies - my studies, because you’ve made time for her where I didn’t - always made her feel like she didn’t matter.” She gently stroked her younger self’s hair, still light gold compared to her own snow white hair. Her hair had gone completely white just after Anna’s funeral.

Tingling sensations began in her fingertips and she knew what was about to happen. She firmly cupped her younger self’s chin. “Elsa, listen to me, okay? I’m about to leap back to my own time. Be honest with Anna. Like the cliche goes, tell her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”

Her younger self nodded and bit her lower lip. “You- you’re sure she won’t hate me? She won’t find me repulsive for… for feeling like I do?” Her eyes widened, watching small electrical sparks dance across her older self’s skin.

Arcs of electricity jumped from Elsa’s skin to the couch and floor. “I’m sure, Elsa. Tell her the truth, and trust in your sister’s heart, okay?”

“Thank you for saving her tonight. I- I wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

Elsa smiled, feeling time’s grasp on her. “You will,” she grinned, as she disappeared in a flash of light.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

We’ve jumped ahead two years here. Recall before the last leap, Anna had confessed her feelings about Big Elsa; here, we see Anna’s transference of those feelings to her sister in her time, and Younger Elsa’s resistance to admitting her own feelings.

* * *

### Join The Party

Enjoyed this story? Want to meet fellow readers and discuss? Join the Elsanna Shenanigans community on Discord at discord.gg/TU9NpnH (copy and paste that URL)

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	12. It's My Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Anna, I know you love me - as a sister. Just like I love you, as a sister. But romantic love? Anna, sisters can't fall in love with each other!"

# Episode 11: It’s My Life

_Eagle Valley, Indiana, 2000_ _Elsa is 20, Anna is 17_

Sunlight streamed gently through the windows in Anna’s room, illuminating her NSYNC and Britney Spears posters covering the walls. She rolled over, pulling her giant stuffed snowman into a hug as the warmth of the morning sun roused her.

As the haze of sleep melted away, the memories of the previous day came flooding back. The prom. Hans. Elsa. A shiver runs through her body despite the sun’s warmth as she contemplates what might have been, had it not been for her time-traveling older sister coming to her rescue.

_I’ve got to thank her today if she’s still here_ , she thought to herself before hearing a gentle rustling outside her door.

The softest of knocks sounded against her door, the pattern a familiar one, three knocks, a pause, and then a single knock. Elsa - her Elsa, not the time traveler - was waiting outside. “Come in,” she whisper-shouted in case her parents were still asleep.

The door softly opened as Elsa came, closing it gently behind her. “Hey.”

“Hey sis!” Anna said with a yawn.

“How… how are you doing this morning?” Elsa asked hesitantly, inspecting Anna’s black eye and bruised cheek from the previous evening’s assault.

Anna shrugged, unsure what to say. “Did… did the other Elsa leave?”

Her sister nodded, sitting down on the corner of the bed. “Last night, after you went to bed. She… I’ve never seen anything like it, Anna.”

“I did, when I was 15. It’s something, isn’t it? Like a blizzard made of lightning, but on her skin. I hope… I hope it doesn’t hurt.”

“She didn’t look like she was in any kind of pain, but she definitely feels it,” Elsa said, absentmindedly rubbbing the corner of the blankets with her thumb and forefinger with a frown.

Anna sat up and gently touched Elsa’s arm. “Hey… I know that look. What’s wrong, sis?” At a mute shake of the head, Anna pressed on. “You know… you know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

“I…” Elsa looked down at her hands, shame and guilt keeping her from looking at her sister. “I feel like I failed you, Anna. Like I’m a terrible big sister.” She took a deep breath as Anna watched silently. “I should have been there to… to protect you from Hans.”

“You were there, sort of!” Anna joked, attempting to lift her sister’s mood without much success. “Besides, everything turned out fine. You were there when we needed you to get us out of there. And you’re here for me now, and you’ve been here for me so much. I couldn’t ask for more from the best sister in the world, Elsa.” She wrapped her arms around Elsa’s middle, holding her close.

Elsa couldn’t breathe. Not because Anna’s hug was too tight, just because she was… so close. So very close. Anna had always been a hugger and a toucher, but everything felt different after she confessed to her older self the previous night. Giving voice to her feelings, even if it was technically only to herself, made them real. She strained to keep her thoughts proper, to conceal and not feel the heat, the closeness, the twisted attraction she had to her own little sister.

“Elsa, you’re so tense. What is it? What’s going on?” She scooted next to Elsa and put an arm around her shoulders. “You don’t have to feel guilty, Elsa. I mean, think about it. In a way, you were there because future you is literally you, right? And you always come back whenever I need it the most, whenever something bad might happen. So you were there.”

Anna kissed her sister on the cheek, inhaling the subtle warm scent of her skin. Her face gently flushed as she nuzzled her face into the side of Elsa’s neck, struggling to resist her desires. She wanted nothing more than to grab Elsa’s face and kiss her full on the mouth. Subconsciously, her hand had already moved to Elsa’s jawline.

“Anna…? What are you thinking? What’s going on with you?” she asked, leaning to the side to look her sister in the eye.

“I… I just… I’m sorry, Elsa. I, uh…” Anna took a deep breath of her own. “I have to tell you something, Elsa. Promise me you won’t laugh at me?”

Elsa nodded. “Of course not, Anna. Like you said, you can tell me anything.” She carefully took one of Anna’s hands and clasped it for moral support, studiously ignoring the warm feeling that blossomed in her heart while doing so.

“I, uh… I kind of fell in love with future you,” she said, blushing furiously.

“Future me?” Elsa murmured, eyes wide in surprise.

“Remember when I was 12 or 13 and I used to lug around my MiniDisc player all the time?”

Elsa rolled her eyes. “God yes, that thing was like a security blanket to you. I remember a couple of years later when my future self came to visit, she said that she’d left some long message on it for you and that you might have fallen in love with her?”

“She told you that?” Anna raised her voice. “What- how long have you known that?”

“A couple of years,” she grinned sheepishly. “I didn’t say anything because it was really sweet and since future me only pops in every so often, I figured it didn’t cause any harm.” Elsa smiled at the memory of her future self bemoaning the awkward situation she’d accidentally created.

Anna rested her head in her hands, hunched over in embarrassment on her bed. “I can’t believe she told you! Anyway…” Anna mumbled into her hands.

“I… didn’t understand anything you just said, Anna, because you were talking into your hands,” Elsa smirked.

“You were asking what’s going on with me, so I was getting to that part. I… uh, well, like I said, I sort of fell in love with future you, right?” Anna squirmed nervously. “Well, that uh… I mean, one thing led to another, and… Imighthavefalleninlovewithyoutoo,” she exhaled.

Elsa blinked.

She blinked again.

“Elsa, please say something.”

Elsa couldn’t. She couldn’t believe her ears. Anna… loved her? Not as a sister, but fell in love with her, not the future version of her? Years of subtle clues all snapped into place, like watching ice crystals cover a wet window in the middle of winter. The constant hugs and touching. The odd kisses on the cheek. The frequent sleepovers.

And as her logical brain processed her memories, her emotions exploded like fireworks in July, singing for joy inside her. Her older self must have known! That’s why she was so adamant the previous night that Elsa be truthful with Anna. Anna must have told her future self about her feelings. As quickly as her heart lifted at Anna’s confession, guilt washed over it like a tidal wave.

“A-Anna… that’s…” she struggled to find the words as a maelstrom raged in her heart, hope that she could express her love at war with guilt over her deviance. “You- you can’t fall in love with me. It’s not… it’s not right, Anna.”

Anna’s face fell. “What do you mean, it’s not right? It feels right, Elsa. You love me so much that in the future, you break the laws of space and time to come save me from myself. And I love you for it, for who you are right now and who you will be in the future. You’re… you’re smart, you’re gorgeous, you’re everything anyone could ever want!”

Anna stared into Elsa’s eyes with a fiery gaze. “You’re everything I could ever want,” she declared, running her hands down Elsa’s shoulders and arms.

_Conceal, don’t feel_ , Elsa repeated to herself over and over again in her head, mesmerized by her sister’s intensity. “Anna, I know you love me - as a sister. Just like I love you, as a sister. But romantic love? Anna, sisters can’t fall in love with each other!”

“Yes they can, Elsa!” she shouted. “Sisters ca-” Anna paused mid-sentence, her eyes widening as she digested her sister’s words.

Elsa’s hands flew to her mouth, covering it in shock as she realized what she’d just said, what she’d let slip.

A slow smile crept across Anna’s face. “Elsa…” she cooed. “Oh, Elsa. I… I get it now.” Her smile broadened. “It isn’t just guilt about not stopping Hans, is it? It’s guilt because of how you feel. How you feel… towards me. You think you’re protecting me by hiding your feelings. You’re in love with me too, aren’t you?”

Elsa burst into tears. “I’m s-s-s-so s-sorry, Anna! I- I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean to feel this way. I- I’ve been trying to hide it for so long. I know- I know it’s wrong, so wrong to feel this way about you, I’m so sorry!” she sobbed, hugging herself tightly.

“Hey, it’s okay Elsa. It really is,” Anna soothed.

“No! No it isn’t, Anna! It’s disgusting! It’s wrong! It- it’s- I’m supposed to be the one who protects you, who looks after you, and all I’ve done lately is fail! I couldn’t save you from Hans and I can’t stop these- these- perverse feelings I have for you!” She curled herself into a ball at the end of Anna’s bed as she cried.

Anna pulled at her arm for a bit but found only resistance, so she decided to try a different tack, one she knew Elsa couldn’t resist. “Okay, then let’s think about this. Tell me your reasons - very clearly - why it’s wrong, Elsa. Let’s debate.”

Elsa had been the leader of the Eagle Valley High School debate team, the youngest ever as a freshman, one of her proudest accomplishments of her youth. She slowly sat up, sniffling, and looked her sister in the eye. “I know what you’re doing, Anna,” she huffed, “but fine. Okay, reason one: incest is against the law.”

“Laws made by old, rich, white men to protect their dwindling opportunities, and Indiana’s laws are strictly about sexual intercourse, which we haven’t had,” Anna said with a grin.

Elsa frowned, making mental notes in her head like the debate champion she was. “Fine. It would be hurtful to our family, especially our parents, if we engaged in a romantic relationship.”

Anna grimaced. “Yeah, I’ll give you that, especially Papa. I think Mama’s a lot more open-minded than you give her credit for, but yeah, Papa wouldn’t be thrilled.”

Weakly smiling, Elsa continued as though reciting from memory. “Incest causes birth defects.”

“For real?” Anna threw her sister a long look. “Elsa, did you even stop to consider that we’re both female and we literally cannot in any way have babies together genetically? What church pamphlet are you reciting this from?”

Elsa coughed. “It’s not a pamphlet! I was just… umm… researching. Anyway, the final point in my argument is that incestuous relationships exploit a power imbalance.”

“Elsa, I’m pursuing you! How is that a power imbalance?”

The blonde stammered, “Uh… because… um… okay, fine, I can’t think of one right now.”

“So other than old white men trying to tell us what we’re allowed to do with our bodies as consenting people of age, and Dad being upset, you really don’t have much of a case,” Anna gave her sister a smug grin.

“Anna… that isn’t how debate works, and you know it. I made two points you can’t refute,” she said, frustrated.

“It is so! You scored two points, but one of them is weaker and worth half a point at best, and I strongly refuted two other points you had that were ridiculous, so I’m ahead by half a point, miss Debate Queen,” Anna smiled, triumphant.

“It’s not half a point, Anna! Incest is against the law!”

“Only once I have sex with you!” she rebutted, enjoying the view as Elsa choked and turned bright red immediately, mouth hanging open as her entire train of thought derailed. Anna gently stroked Elsa’s shoulder. “Listen, all we’ve done is confess our true love for each other, right? Nothing else, and I don’t see anything wrong with that at all. I’m not asking you to do anything other than be honest with me, Elsa. Be honest with yourself.”

Anna drew her sister into a tentative hug. “Do you love me?”

Elsa relented, letting Anna hug her from the side. “I do, too much.”

“Do you believe that I love you in the same way?”

Elsa nodded, wringing her hands together as her eyes grew watery once more.

“Then please believe me when I tell you that you haven’t done anything wrong, and neither have I. We have every right to love each other in every way that we want,” Anna murmured. “All I’m asking for is honesty, Elsa. Now, what are you really afraid of?”

Elsa turned away, looking out the window. “Being hurt and hurting you, Anna. I… I want this so bad, but I just- I don’t want to screw up your life or mine doing something wrong.”

Anna touched her fingers to Elsa’s cheek. “You won’t hurt me, Elsa. You have and you will go to the ends of the universe for me. I don’t care what anyone else thinks or says as long as I have you. Does this-” she asked, clasping her sister’s hand, “feel wrong?” A brief shake of her sister’s head answered her. “True love is never wrong, Elsa.”

She cupped Elsa’s chin in her hands and tentatively pressed their lips together for a too-brief moment. They both savored the moment, eyes closed, feeling the other’s breath hitching, the softness of their lips, their bodies hugged together.

“That didn’t feel wrong either,” Elsa whispered as Anna tightened their embrace.

The alarm clock next to Anna’s bed went off, playing her favorite pop radio station. Anna smiled, recognizing the song instantly and stroking her hands down Elsa’s back as they held the hug a few moments longer, basking in her sister’s warm embrace. She started to sing along gently in Elsa’s ear.

“ _Tomorrow’s getting harder, make no mistake. Luck ain’t enough, you’ve got to make your own breaks. It’s my life, and it’s now or never. I ain’t gonna live forever._ ”

Elsa pulled back for a moment to look into Anna’s eyes, then lunged forward to kiss her in a way that was anything but tentative.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

This interlude is literally the next day after Episode 10, and it exists at the request/suggestion of Enrico Dandolo and Matjojo over at Elsanna Shenanigans who asked if we’d get to see Elsa’s confession to Anna.

Originally, this entire chapter was just inferred, as you’ll see in upcoming chapters of the story, but the more I thought about it, the more these two folks are correct. While this is a crossover of Quantum Leap and The Time Traveler’s Wife, at its core it’s an Elsanna story - and it’s silly to have Elsanna and not show the most important part, the creation of that relationship.

Happy holidays, my friends.

* * *

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	13. Time of Your Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I need that pain, that memory of what was, so that I never take her for granted again. Gratitude is... easier when you know how much you have to lose.

# Episode 12: Time of Your Life

_Groom Lake, Nevada, 2022_

The moment Elsa reappeared, she looked down at her hands. Kai and Kristoff both jumped from their chairs in the observation room, Kai already taking readings with his tablet while Kristoff handed her the lab coat and sweatpants.

Elsa beamed and held up her hands after she dressed. “Look,” she said with a broad grin, showing off her injuries from the most recent leap into the past.

Gerda ran over. “Doctor Beckett! What in the world happened?” She turned to grab the medical kit behind one of the desks.

Elsa regarded the cuts and bruises on her hands. “I got into a fight this last trip!” she exclaimed. “Do you realize what this means?” She looked at the team, bubbling with excitement. “This is conclusive proof that I’m physically moving my whole body through time!”

Kai stared in wonder at her knuckles. “This… this is extraordinary, Doctor Beckett! You really are moving through quantum superposition as a coherent entity. I had speculated it was possible you were only viewing your past experiences, but it seems clear now that you are physically present in your own past. How amazing!” He took some additional readings, clucking to himself.

“Wait a minute, Elsa,” Kristoff interrupted, astonished. “You got into a fight? You? What- how?”

Elsa recounted the factual events of her most recent leap as Gerda applied antibiotics and topical painkillers to her knuckles, omitting her younger self’s confession about her feelings for Anna.

Kristoff shook his head. “You’re… well, to be fair, if someone was trying to do that to one of my siblings, I’d throw down too,” he chuckled. “I just didn’t think you had it in you.”

She threw him a long look. “Funny, Kristoff, the last three times we’ve done any sparring together at the base gym, you’ve ended up ass over teakettle,” she smirked, flexing her hands as Gerda finished up. After one particularly long day about a year ago, Elsa needed to blow off some steam, so she’d hit the base gym and was doing a few rounds on the heavy bag. Kristoff was training separately, preparing to re-qualify for his fitness tests, and had suggested some light sparring. He’d been unaware of Elsa’s extensive training in Takagi Yoshin Ryu and ended up face first on the mat more times than he’d ever admit to anyone else.

“What? No! I mean, you’re skilled, you’re very technically proficient. I just, I mean, I, uh… I’m gonna shut up now before I make things worse for myself at our next workout,” he said, slumping into the desk chair. “So… besides getting into a fight, did you learn anything more about changing time?”

Elsa nodded with an eager grin. “The timeline has definitely changed. This past leap, some events happened that happened in my past, but in a different order and with a different outcome. The fight, the ripped dress, the drinking - they were all there, but not at all how they originally played out.”

Kai smiled and nodded slowly. “That makes a great deal of sense. If time is a river, and those events are rocks in the river, then they would have to happen in some fashion, but the river would flow over them differently. And as we all know, rivers change course over time.”

“Exactly!” she practically bounced with excitement. “What if… what if the accident has to happen, but she doesn’t have to die?”

Kristoff exhaled a drawn-out breath. “Listen, Elsa, I, um, I just don’t want you to get your hopes up too much, okay? I really do hope for your sake that you can change things, that you can change time, but… just remember that it might not break your way.” He looked at his friend and colleague with sadness. If her sister still had to die, it would crush her. She’d clearly begun to hope more fervently.

“I… I know. Thank you, Kristoff. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much, but evidence is accumulating that we- I might be able to save Anna after all.”" Elsa’s stomach rumbled. “What- what time is it, anyway?”

“Almost lunch, Doctor Beckett. You were away substantially longer this time,” said Kai, standing up to retrieve his coat. “Shall we adjourn to the dining hall?”

The group walked from the observation room across the building to one of the base’s mess halls. Unlike the average Air Force base, Groom Lake was reasonably well-appointed in terms of amenities, including the cafeteria food. After fetching their meals, Kai and Gerda sat together on one side of the table, while Kristoff and Elsa sat on the other.

“Must be Friday”, Kristoff smirked. “Can always count on pot roast and mashed potatoes on Fridays,” he said, looking at the contents of his tray.

“Can always count on the military to try and save money by recycling this week’s proteins,” she chuckled. “Speaking of saving time… Kai… read back the durations of each leap, please?” she asked, staring intently at the mashed potatoes on her plate.

The portly scientist pulled up his tablet and perused his notes. “Ah, here we are. First leap back in time, 5 minutes in our time. Second, 10 minutes. Third, 20 minutes. Fourth, 40 minutes. This most recent excursion to the past was 80 minutes. It appears that you’ve been roughly doubling the time you’re away.”

“Does that make any sense to you, Kai? Why would I be away longer in the present, the closer I get to it?” Her brow furrowed as she turned the problem over in her mind. If anything, time away in the present should grow shorter, rather than longer.

Kai cleared his throat. “I suspect, Doctor Beckett, that it may be because of the particles decaying. By my readings, only 40% of the bosons that flooded you originally remain; perhaps somehow their decay is making the window away longer.”

Elsa drew idle circles in her mashed potatoes. “So… at full power, time more or less stopped for me here, and now that they’re fading, time is moving for me again. I wonder… Gooshie, can we save this timeline somehow? Keep the memory of it preserved?” She started to trace an equation in her potatoes before snapping out of her mind’s wanderings. “Did… did you make any progress on determining why I do or don’t leap into the past?”

It was Gerda’s turn to pull up her tablet. “In fact, we did make some progress there, Elsa. According to Gooshie’s scans, we saw increased activity in your frontal and medial temporal lobes, activity significantly above normal just before your most recent leap.” She handed the tablet over to Elsa, who immediately began scrutinizing the imaging.

“These nodes… here and here,” she pointed, leaning over the table, “that’s normally what? It’s been a little while since my neuro classes.”

Gerda zoomed in on the rainbow-colored image of Elsa’s brain. “Episodic memory, typically. Long-term memory about very specific events, situations, and experiences.”

“So…” she mused, “it’s very specific memories.” She thought back to the leaps. Anna’s birth. Loneliness. Trouble in school. The holidays. Prom. All of them were pivotal moments in one way or another in Anna’s life, moments when she started down worse trajectories. Every moment hurt Elsa’s heart to think about how little she’d done to support her sister in the original timeline.

“That said, dear, Gooshie and I were discussing this morning while you were away and there’s no logical, scientific reason your memories should have any impact on quantum particles. It simply makes no sense,” Gerda said thoughtfully as she drank some of the iced tea on her tray.

Elsa shook her head. “Very little of this makes sense, Gerda. Think about it: the tachyonic field around me isolates me from temporal changes. I can accept that. Why haven’t any of you been affected? Kristoff, what do you remember me telling you about my sister?”

“That she was a pain more often than not, she got into bad relationships, did some drugs… you loved her, you cared about her, but sometimes she drove you up a wall, and your guilt over her death was because of that. That’s what you’ve told me over the last few months,” he said, recalling their many conversations over coffees. “You’ve never mentioned any of what’s happened on these jumps into the past before the last two days.”

“Exactly! And yet I am the only one leaping into the past. When I return, I should be returning to a timeline where the changes have been made - and you remember the changes, not the original.”

Kai was shaking his head vigorously, eager to interrupt. “Doctor Beckett, the tachyonic field surrounds this entire facility, not just you. I suspect we are all affected to some degree; it’s just you that travels through time because you were at the focal point of the oscillator. We are all likely in a time bubble of sorts.”

“And so when the field finally fades away…”

“Yes, we will all likely lose our current state and merge with the timeline that has changed. That would be the logical outcome, Doctor Beckett.” The scientist mulled his words over for a moment before taking a bite of his pot roast. “Though, forgive me for saying so, Doctor, going back to your earlier question about preserving this timeline… If the timeline that you’re modifying is for the better, why wouldn’t we wish to forget it entirely? Why concern ourselves with a present-day that will cease to exist?”

The blonde scientist sat back in her chair. “I don’t want to lose sight of why I’m doing all this. Why we’re doing all this,” she murmured.

“But why would you want to keep the bad memories at all, Elsa?” asked Kristoff, not looking up from his plate despite clearly having lost his appetite. “If you’re really able to change the past, why keep any of it? Everything that you went through, everything that happened, is just pain for you. If you had the option to erase it all, why keep the pain? If you gave me that choice, I’d gladly erase everything bad that ever happened to me.” He pushed his plate away and folded his arms.

Elsa squinted around the cafeteria’s perimeter. Other than a few service workers behind the foods lines, well out of hearing range, there was no one else in the cafeteria. “Because… I need to remember what I’ve lost, Kristoff. I need to remember what could have happened, what did happen.”

She looked around the table at her friends, her colleagues. Working with this team for the last 2 years, they’d become almost a family of sorts, and while she wasn’t as close with Kai or Gerda as she was with Kristoff, they’d all heard their fair share of each other’s struggles. “I… you know I have a tendency to shut people out. You know I tend to… to almost take things for granted when I’m focused on something. If this works, if I really can save my sister… I need that pain, that memory of what was, so that I never take her for granted again. Gratitude is… easier when you know how much you have to lose.”

Gerda nodded in assent. “You’re a good woman, Elsa. Your- your habits, your tendencies, they’re an outgrowth of your trauma, though. You shut people out because you had to shut out the pain. Perhaps… if the experiment goes as you planned, perhaps you will never develop that habit to begin with. On that note, there’s one other noteworthy thing, here in the frontolimbic network, the amygdala and the insula” she said quietly, pointing at the functional MRI scan.

Elsa shook her head. “I’m drawing a blank on what this activation pattern means, Gerda.”

“Guilt, Elsa. These are the regions of the brain that light up most when expressing guilt. I suspect it’s not just the memories of Anna that are triggering the leaps, but your guilt about those specific memories. How that factors into the quantum mechanics, I’m unqualified to say, but the imaging here is quite clear,” the elderly physician offered.

“Perhaps. Anyway,” she stood up, gathering her tray, “based on Gooshie’s decay rate calculations, this tachyonic field won’t last forever. We should probably continue our research, process the data, see what happens while we wait for… whatever the next leap will be.”

Gerda stood alongside her. “Have you had any strong memories of your time with Anna since you came back?”

Elsa shook her head. “No, nothing substantial. I’ve been think-” she stopped as she glanced over at Kristoff. The conversation had clearly made him morose and withdrawn; whatever was in his past, he had never shared with her but it was eating at him nonetheless. She stared at him idly poking his fork into the back of his hand, lost in thought…

… and pain flooded her heart. Anna’s sophomore year of college was the year she dropped out, despite going to one of the easiest local community colleges. Her dirtbag boyfriend, Hans, was hanging out with her all the time, and had been introducing her to progressively stronger drugs. By that point, Elsa was almost through her doctorate degree, and her parents had begged her to come home to see what was wrong with Anna.

After a sharp, vocal confrontation over dinner the night she’d flown back to Indiana from Cambridge, Elsa had grabbed Anna’s arm to keep her from running away during the conversation, and recoiled in shock at what she saw. Track marks, a series of a half-dozen small, circular bruises along the inside of her elbow. Her baby sister was an addict. They’d fought and she ended up running away with Hans for a little while. The only thing that had brought her back was that Hans nearly died of an overdose; Anna hadn’t known what to do, so she’d begrudgingly come home.

She winced at the pain from the memory, frozen like a statue at the table, her tray still in hand as guilt overwhelmed her. The things she’d said to Anna in anger stabbed at her heart. “I- I just remembered something. The first time I discovered Anna was using drugs. Heroin. She was… 19, I think. It was two years before the accident.” Elsa looked at Kai. “Get ready, Gooshie. That was… a really strong memory.”

Within moments, the first tingles of electricity started at her fingertips and unlike previous trips, the sparks intensified almost immediately. “Wait! I forgot to ask- Gerda- what brings me back? Memories that trigger guilt send me back in time, but what brings me-”

With a bright flash of light, the tray clattered back to the table.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

Will Elsa remember what she’s lost, or will time reclaim everything and erase her knowledge of what transpired?

Only… time… will tell.

* * *

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	14. Complicated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I would rather see Anna in Elsa’s arms any day than see Anna’s body in the ground."

_Warnings: violence, gore, character death, implied sibling incest_

# Episode 13: Complicated

_Eagle Valley, Indiana, 2002_ _Elsa is 42 and 22, Anna is 19_

Agnar finished putting the last steak on the grill, smiling as he sipped a Ringnes lager in the warm September air. His family was originally from Norway, and he’d cheered at hearing Elsa’s interest in potentially doing post-doctoral work in Oslo (where Ringnes was brewed) as it would give him and Iduna a chance to go visit distant relatives that still lived in his family’s hometown.

He hadn’t been to Arendal since he was a teen; his parents had moved them to the United States in the 1970s and never looked back. Any time he’d asked about why they left, he was given a non-committal “Oh, just not much there for us any more” from his father. Agnar looked forward to seeing just how little or much actually was there.

Iduna opened the sliding glass door in the kitchen, carrying a metal bowl of coarsely chopped vegetables for grilling. She smiled softly at her husband, admiring him. They’d both had quite the journey, getting married at 20, having Elsa at 21 and Anna at 24. She thought back to Anna’s birth and then 7 years ago, meeting an adult version of her daughter on both occasions.

She shook her head. To this day, she was still unsure that she didn’t hallucinate the entire experience. No one else in the family had made mention of any such strange occurrences, and when she’d told Agnar in bed the night it happened, he was certain she’d just been daydreaming. She’d never brought it up since.

“Hey sweetheart,” he greeted her with a smile, taking the bowl of vegetables and opening the lid on the black propane grill. “Are the girls ready for dinner?”

Iduna looked over her shoulder back into the kitchen. Elsa was buried in a gigantic textbook of some kind, idly nibbling on the stalks of celery and carrots she’d put out as a snack earlier. Anna sat next to her at the table, bobbing her head as she scrolled through her music on her brand new iPod, one white earbud dangling from her ear and the other in her sister’s ear. From time to time she’d look up and smile at Elsa, briefing running her fingers through her sister’s blonde hair before returning to the little device. Every so often she’d burst out singing a lyric or two.

“As ready as they’ll ever be,” Iduna smiled. “How much longer?”

Agnar peeked under the lid. “Probably another ten m-”

A bright blue bolt of lightning came out nowhere and struck the grill, launching tiny blue sparks into the air. Agnar leaped back out of the way, his arms open wide to protect his wife as more bolts of electricity shot somehow from a cloudless sky. Moments later, a sphere of blue-white light temporarily blinded them as electricity discharged everywhere.

Their vision returned moments later, but their breath did not. Kneeling on the brick patio a few feet away from the still-running grill was Elsa.

Naked.

“Oh my god!” they both exclaimed simultaneously.

Elsa stood up, dusted herself off, and smiled awkwardly with a small wave. “Um… hi Mama and Papa?”

Agnar stared, confused, looking back and forth between the kitchen and the patio. Elsa was still seated at the kitchen table, and yet was in front of him, without a stitch of clothing after a… lightning storm? “Wh-what in the- how- what- Elsa…” he stammered.

“Elsa! Your clothes!” Iduna gasped, rushing inside to grab some of Elsa… her Elsa’s dirty laundry from the laundry room just off the kitchen. She scrambled back out with a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

Modesty restored, Elsa smiled at her parents as the younger version of herself stood in the doorway holding hands with Anna, the two of them looking at her with wry smiles. _Oh boy_ , she thought to herself.

* * *

“You… you were right, Iduna. You weren’t dreaming that day. I- I’m sorry,” he said to his wife as they sat around the dinner table, the setting sun casting a golden light across the family supper. He’d recalled Iduna’s impossible description of meeting an adult version of Elsa 7 years ago but had dismissed it. Clearly, with two Elsas seated at the dinner table, it wasn’t a dream at all.

He turned to the older Elsa, the one whose hair was distinctly white instead of pale blonde. “So… you’re also my daughter? This is, ah, very confusing.”

“I am. She and I are the same person, just from different periods of time. What date is it?”

“September 1, 2002,” Iduna said with a smile.

Elsa smiled at her father. “So your Elsa and I are twenty years apart now.” She took a bite of her steak and chewed on it with a small grin. Slightly overcooked, as Agnar always tended to cook his steaks. It was definitely the taste of home. She looked around the table, her smile broadening. Agnar and Iduna had aged, had some grey in their hair, but still looked more like the youthful parents she’d met at the hospital than her parents of her own time.

“Is this the first time you’ve visited from the, ah, future?” he asked, still confused.

Elsa shook her head. “No, this is my fifth visit. I’ve seen your Elsa and Anna several times before.”

He looked at his daughters sternly. “And no one mentioned this to me?”

The sisters looked at each other guiltily as Elsa spoke up. “I asked them not to. We… we’re still trying to understand all the implications of time travel itself, so the fewer people who know about it, the better.” She recapped in layman’s terms for nearly an hour what had transpired so far - the experiment, the past visits, the seemingly fluid timeline.

Agnar shook his head after the explanation and grabbed another Ringnes from the refrigerator. “Would you like one?” he offered to the visiting Elsa, who nodded and gratefully accepted the cold brew. “So… is this more like Back to the Future or Terminator?”

“It’s a little more complicated than either, and like I said, we’re still trying to figure out the ramifications ourselves,” she said, taking a swig of the beer. “Our best guess it’s similar to both except you can’t cause paradoxes, like killing yourself or other paradoxical phenomena. I’m still working on the research.”

“And the purpose of this research is?” he asked, looking around the table. Agnar was still dumbfounded that this had been going on since Anna’s birth; he’d assumed he was just misremembering the doctor that had helped Iduna’s pregnancy complications, though he’d noted just how strongly his older daughter reminded him of that night as she grew up.

All four women looked at each other in alarm at his question. After an awkward pause, Anna spoke up. “She’s… trying to stop me from dying, Papa.”

Silence.

Uncomfortable silence as all eyes turned to Agnar, gauging his reaction.

“How- how soon?” he asked quietly, dread filling his heart and choking out his breath. No parent wants to hear they will outlive their children.

“Two years from now,” Elsa whispered. “Two years and a month from now, Anna will be in a car crash and will be killed on impact.” She looked at her parents. The accident was what had turned their hair completely grey in months, aging them a decade in less than a year. It had almost torn the family apart and ripped her soul from her body.

“So you’re here to stop it before it happens?” he asked, hopeful.

Elsa looked at Anna and her younger self, their expressions pensive. She sighed. “That’s the idea, yes. Whether or not I can successfully do it, I’m not sure. But I am trying as best as I can. I can’t lose Anna again,” she breathed, staring at the redhead as her younger self did exactly the same.

Agnar pushed himself away from the table. “This is a little too much for me to deal with all at once. I… I’m going to step outside for a little fresh air.” As the chair scraped across the linoleum floor, the women all looked at him walking out the patio door. After a long beat, Elsa stood, motioning for the family to stay put.

“I’ll talk to him.”

She walked outside in the sweltering September air, her own beer in hand. She found him staring out over the low grass hills, lost in his thoughts.

“Papa.”

Agnar turned to face a daughter almost as old as he was. “I… I don’t fully understand, Elsa. But I’m starting to, I think. You’ve always been so wonderful with your sister, ever since you were little. It’s no surprise to me that you would find some way to try to save her.”

“That’s the funny thing, Papa. I wasn’t always so wonderful with Anna. In fact, before this grand adventure started, Anna and I had drifted far, far apart. Timeline changes have already occurred,” she said, looking briefly over her shoulder. The rest of the family was still eating; her younger self was humorously feeding Anna some of her steak, to much giggling. Elsa shook her head and turned back to her father.

“So… you’ve been making changes all along?”

She nodded. “Since the very beginning.”

“The b-” Agnar’s eyes widened. “I knew it! I knew I wasn’t going crazy. I didn’t dare say anything to Iduna, I thought she would have me committed. You were at Anna’s birth. You were the night doctor who induced her!” He turned in a circle, jubilant. “When Elsa started really growing up, as a teenager, she started to look more and more familiar. I thought perhaps it was a resemblance to some famous actress - my daughters are beautiful enough to be in the movies if they so chose,” he beamed, filled with fatherly pride. “But it wasn’t. It was you all along. Iduna and I had met you before.”

Elsa smiled softly, hiding her grin behind her hand. “You’re right, Papa. It was me back then. The funny thing is, that experience, from my point of view, was just a few days ago.”

“Why were you there?”

“I’m still not sure how this time traveling works, not fully, but I seem to show up at important points in Anna’s life. What I said - that it was a placental abruption - back then, medicine was much less advanced. In my original timeline, she was born with what I now think was hidden neurological damage from lack of oxygen at birth.” She’d mulled that over after the first trip. So many of Anna’s challenges may have stemmed from that one incident alone, and since she lived either way, the nature of time allowed that change to be made.

Agnar started pacing slowly, anxiety displacing his jubilance. Another sip of his beer. “What other things happened? You said they’re important points?”

Elsa nodded as she ticked off the past on her fingers. “I think… I think I’m setting right things that went wrong in Anna’s life, especially things where… I could have been a better sister. When she was 7, feeling like she wasn’t loved because I was so busy with school. I talked to myself then, to get her - me - to spend more time with Anna. Helping Anna not fail math when she was 12. Keeping her from walking away from the family when she was 15-”

Agnar started. “What? That’s absurd! She was never that unhappy. Stubborn, yes. As fiery a temper as her hair, for sure. But walk out on us?” he nearly shouted.

“Papa, these are all points from the original timeline. By that point in Anna’s life, they had taken slightly different twists and turns. When she was 17, she was supposed to get drunk, get in a huge fistfight at her prom, and end up spending the night with her ‘boyfriend’, an abusive piece of sh- garbage named Hans Westergaard,” Elsa recounted, subconsciously bunching her fists as the memories of both timelines flashed in her mind.

The blood drained from Agnar’s face. “She… did get into a fight at her prom. She told us about it a couple of days later when we came home from a business trip. Said she’d managed to get herself out of a bad situation with Elsa’s help and Elsa had driven her home. I’m guessing… she technically told the truth, but it was you that helped her out of the bad situation.”

Elsa shook her head. “That’s more or less right. I might have beaten Hans within an inch of his life after he tried to force himself on Anna. So you see… I’ve been able to make changes to some things, but some things still happen more generally. I’m hoping her death isn’t one of them.”

Her father took a short drink from his beer, regarded Elsa carefully as he measured what he was about to say, and then took a much longer drink for courage, finishing the bottle. “That would explain why my Elsa has been avidly taking martial arts classes for the last couple of years,” he mused, watching the elder Elsa’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Oh yes, I was wondering where that sudden motivation came from, right after Anna’s prom. As is typical with Elsa - with you - she’s thrown herself headfirst into it and will probably get a black belt in just a couple of years,” he smiled wanly.

“So tell me, Elsa,” he said haltingly a few moments later, his face completely absent of mirth, “When did you fall in love with Anna?”

Elsa dropped her beer bottle in shock, the bottle landing in the grass, spilling its contents on the lawn. “What?”

Agnar stared at her. “You heard me, Elsa. When did you fall in love with your sister?”

Her thoughts swirled into a maelstrom of confusion. She’d never harbored any romantic feelings towards Anna, not even once. She was always so busy worrying about her sister’s health and safety that such a love never had time to form. But her younger self’s confession after prom showed that in this timeline, it had - and it had matured enough for her father to have noticed.

“I never did. She was… difficult as a sister. My Anna, not yours, not the girl sitting over there. Romantic love was out of the question, but familial love? Caring for her? Wanting her to stop hurting herself all the time because she was her own worst enemy? Trying to remove years of crap that layered itself on her heart of gold? That was the love I had for her.” Tears welled up in Elsa’s eyes as she began to pace across the lawn. “I tried so hard to save her, for so many years. From failure, from Hans, from drugs… from death itself. I couldn’t save her from any of it until now. It’s not romantic love I felt for her - it was guilt. Guilt for not doing enough, for not being enough.”

Elsa turned to look back at the kitchen, watching the sisters with a touch of envy at their closeness. “But your Elsa… she confessed something like that the night of Anna’s prom, that she had feelings for Anna. And like I said before, I don’t have her memories. I don’t remember any of this ever happening. But yes, she is in love with Anna, without question.”

“It’s… not right. It’s-” Agnar sighed, looking equal parts disgusted and angry. He stared over the horizon before raising his voice. “Siblings shouldn’t love each other like that! I’ve told Elsa so many times that it’s her place as the older sister to… to not behave that way. To protect her sister, not to treat Anna as a- a girlfriend! To conceal it, don’t feel it.”

Surprise and anger clouded Elsa’s face and she raised her own voice in turn. “You can’t tell someone not to feel love, Papa. Both of them are legal adults that can make their own choices, and this is a choice that causes no harm. Could you stop loving Mama if I told you to?”

Agnar recoiled, red-faced. “It’s not the same! She’s not my sister! Elsa, how can you not see how wrong this is? It’s deviant! You- Elsa- they shouldn’t feel this way about each other. It’s- it’s disgusting!”

A choked cry made both of them turn around, only to see Anna, red-faced, running out of the house while Elsa’s younger version of herself clutched the patio door, white as a sheet and trembling. Iduna sat at the table, frozen in place, her fork midway to her mouth as she looked in shock at the family.

The elder Elsa turned to her father. “This has gone far enough. Stay here,” she snapped. “I’ll go get her.” She pulled on her younger version’s sneakers by the kitchen door as she faced her father before leaving. “Love isn’t disgusting, Papa. And it’s far better than the alternative. I would rather see Anna in Elsa’s arms any day than see Anna’s body in the ground,” she snarled, running out the door.

–

Elsa struggled to keep up with her younger sister. Her Anna had never been athletic, preferring to feel good by indulging in a variety of vices. This Anna had apparently embraced more natural highs like running. Indiana was known for many things, but nearly infinite cornfields was near the top of the list, and Elsa had to keep pace with Anna or she’d lose her in the sea of sameness near their home.

After a solid ten minutes of running, she saw a glimpse of Anna breaking for a copse of trees. This part of their neighborhood was darkly familiar to Elsa; it was where a lot of the local hoodlums would hang out, smoking and drinking as they avoided their homes. She’d had to find Anna more than a few times in the woods and convince her to come home.

The sun had sunk below the horizon, the last rays of light slowly fading. Elsa navigated her way through the woods to where she remembered Anna’s hiding spot was in her time. Sure enough, she found her sister sitting on a log, her head in her hands as her soft sobs echoed in the twilight.

“Hey…” she reached out, gently touching her shoulder.

Anna’s shoulders heaved from her cries. “H-how could he say that about me? About us? We love each other!”

Elsa sighed. Giving emotional counsel had never been one of her strong points; after Anna’s death, she practically froze her own heart to avoid the pain. “I’m- I’m sorry you had to hear that from him. This is one of those things that… I’m not sure someone of his generation is ever going to understand or accept, Anna.”

“Why? Why is this so wrong to him?” she cried.

“Well… part of it I’m sure is that he’s what, 45? 46 now? He grew up in a time when any kind of same-sex relationship was taboo. And part of it is the whole…” Elsa coughed, struggling to say the word, “incest thing. It’s definitely non-traditional, even in my time.”

Anna frowned. “Yeah, but it’s not like we’re going to be making babies with birth defects or anything! Elsa and I just… we just love each other. A lot.”

Elsa smiled. “I know you do. She told me just before I left last time that she had fallen for you. And that was what… two years ago?”

“Yeah,” she nodded vigorously, her twin red braids dancing with the motion. “Two years ago, after prom. She told me the next day while she was taking care of my injuries. I was so relieved! I didn’t know if she would react like…”

“Like Papa?”

Anna nodded and cast her head down. “Y-yeah. Like that.”

“So after I left… you two started…?”

“We started hanging out more whenever she was home from grad school. I mean, we were pretty close before that, but that took things to a whole new level.” Anna’s posture relaxed as she relived pleasant memories. “We started doing silly, fun stuff like making each other breakfast and then about a year ago we… we…” She blushed furiously. “We started having… sleepovers?” she said with a shy smile.

Elsa joined her in blushing. “Oh. OH! Oh my. I- oh. Wow. You, um, you really do love each other a lot.” Her breathing shallowed. “I hope this won’t upset you, Anna but… I never thought of you that way. Not that I’m judging you or my younger self! You’re both very different people from who I am and who my Anna was, and you… something we say in my time is that love is love. Whatever consenting adults do in the privacy of their own lives is their business and no one else’s.”

Anna snorted. “Yeah… I don’t think Papa’s quite so chill about that point of view.” She sighed. “I’d love to live in that time, when you don’t have to worry about who you love.”

Elsa regarded her with deep sadness. “I… I would love for you to live, too. That… that’s the whole reason for all of this. So that hopefully… you live.”

Both women sat, wordless, as their emotions settled from the chase, until they heard a muffled cry in the distance, near the entrance of the woods.

“What was that?” Anna gasped, looking around frantically in the dusky light.

“It sounded like it was coming from the entrance. Let’s go check it out.” Elsa picked up a heavy branch from the ground and started making her way nearly silently towards the clearing. In the murky twilight she could make out two shapes moving around, the light of the risen moon illuminating them in pale silver.

“Elsa? ELSA!” Anna shouted, running ahead heedless of the danger. The darkness slowly revealed the two scuffling figures to be her sister and a scruffy, seedy man struggling to grab Elsa around the waist with one arm while holding a hand over her mouth.

“Leave my sister alone!” Anna screamed, launching herself at the ratty man. She clambered up his back and threw her arm around his neck, attempting to choke him. The distraction was enough for the younger Elsa to break free and immediately stomp on the attacker’s knee. In pain, he bit down on the inside of Anna’s elbow, causing her to shriek and let go.

The attacker spun, ready to attack Anna. She gasped at the sight of him, recognizing his face. “Hans? What the fuck are you doing?”

Hans, dressed in filthy, tattered clothes, his formerly red hair now brown with grime and wildly unkempt, his face sallow and skin weeping with open sores from meth abuse, snarled through shattered teeth at Anna. “Fucking bitch!” he yelled with a lisp through his remaining teeth. “You did this to me!” He started to lunge for Anna but was intercepted by the younger Elsa, who planted a solid kick in his stomach, doubling him over.

Anna clutched her injured arm, blood seeping out from her fingers as her sister shielded her from Hans. He staggered to his feet and reached into the waistband of his pants to withdraw a short, ugly knife. “I’m gonna fucking kill you, bitch!” he slurred. Elsa backed Anna up further, trying to gain some distance from Hans’ craziness.

A loud crack reverberated in the dark as he crumpled to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Part of a tree branch appeared to be embedded in his skull. Behind him stood the older Elsa, the remainder of the broken branch in her hand. She looked down at the body and grabbed both sisters by the arms. “Let’s get out of here, okay?” She took off her shirt and wrapped it around Anna’s injured arm.

Anna glanced over her shoulder. “Oh my god, is- is he-”

The elder Elsa nodded as they walked back towards the sisters’ home. “Probably,” she said softly, picking up the pace.

After a half hour’s fast walk, they arrived back at Agnar and Iduna’s house, the darkness concealing Anna’s injuries. Iduna stood at the doorway, pale and anxious. “Elsa, Anna- you’re all right!” she cried, stepping forward before Elsa motioned for her to stop.

The elder Elsa ushered everyone inside the house. “We need povidone iodine, bacitracin, and some gauze,” she ordered, her physician’s voice brooking no dissent. Iduna scurried to the bathroom to get the supplies while Elsa sat Anna down to look at her injured arm. She inhaled sharply.

What few teeth Hans had left had created a pattern on Anna’s arm that resembled… track marks. Bruises around punctures, right along the elbow, though thankfully Hans had missed the critical arteries and veins. The bleeding had mostly stopped, so she doused it liberally with iodine as she looked up at Anna’s teary eyes. “Tomorrow you’re going to need to go to a clinic and get some shots, I’m afraid. These are deep enough to be concerning, and who knows what the fuck diseases he was carrying. Elsa-” she glanced over her shoulder at her younger self, “Get Anna into the shower and get her cleaned up with a fresh change of clothes. We’ll bandage up the arm afterward.”

The two sisters made their way to the bathroom while Elsa turned to look at Iduna and Agnar; he sat in shock at the table. Iduna sat down next to him and looked up at Elsa. “Wh- what happened?”

Elsa described running after Anna, encountering her younger self and the violent aftermath. “I’m guessing your Elsa left shortly after I did and she’s not as fast a runner as I am. By the time she got there, Hans came across her and attacked her.”

Iduna looked towards the door, frightened. “Do you think- is he still dangerous?”

The blonde shook her head. “He’s no danger to anyone, not any more.” A brief burst of remorse washed over her; when Anna had run ahead, she grabbed the largest club-like branch she could find. As she’d approached Hans, she had her choice of places to hit him and she’d weighed her options carefully. The branch she’d picked up looked like a mace, a ball of roots at one end worn down by time into dull spikes. Knowing all he’d done to Anna, even in this timeline, the choice had been easy and she brought it down on his skull with the force of a sledgehammer.

Elsa cocked her head to ensure she heard the sound of running water, then turned to face her father. He took a deep breath, eyes downcast. “This… this is all my fault.”

“Yes it is, Papa,” she answered without hesitation, watching him shudder. “I understand how you feel about their relationship, but this whole ‘conceal, don’t feel’ business is bullshit. All it will do is drive them away from you - especially Anna. Tonight was a close call, and she very well might not have come home.”

Iduna swallowed and looked at her, fear mixed with sadness. “She… she would have been out there in the woods alone… alone with that monster.”

Elsa nodded, her face grim. “And my younger self isn’t up to the task of fighting monsters just yet, though she did try valiantly.”

“What… what was supposed to happen? Tonight, I mean, the reason you came here originally.” Iduna quietly asked, recalling the conversation over dinner about Elsa’s memories.

“Anna ran away. It wasn’t permanent, but after a nasty argument, I grabbed her arm and saw she had track marks on it from heroin. She was an addict, thanks to Hans, and we fought even more. She ran off to spend the night with him, and I flew back to Cambridge furious at her, at how she was throwing her life away,” Elsa reminisced. “All things considered, even with our-” she threw him a sharp glance, “disagreement, she’s safe at home under your roof. That’s an improvement.”

Agnar sank into his chair. “I… I’ll try, Elsa. I’ll try to understand. I don’t want to lose them, not to a monster in the woods and not to drugs. You’re right. Tonight was too close a call. What you said… the thought of my baby girl’s funeral… I’ll do anything to avoid that. I… I’ll try.”

“That’s all they want you to do, Papa,” she said softly, rubbing his shoulder. “That’s all they need - your love and care. You don’t need to enthusiastically jump for joy about a non-traditional relationship. You just have to accept that it’s real and that they’re not harming themselves or anyone else.”

Agnar nodded wordlessly as Iduna held his hand.

Tiny sparks of lightning began to arise from her fingers. Elsa smiled; the evening’s tumultuous events had given her another answer as well. “It’s time for me to go. I’ve done what I came here to do, apparently.” She looked down the hall; the sisters were still in the shower. “Take Anna to a doctor tomorrow and have her checked out. She’ll need a tetanus booster for sure, and possibly a hepatitis booster, okay?”

Both parents nodded their heads as more arcs of lightning sparked from Elsa’s skin, flowing into the floor. “Love them for who they are. Let them love each other, and don’t let Anna drive a car on her 21st birthday!” she urged, as she vanished in a flash of light.

* * *

That evening, the sisters lay in bed together. Elsa gently stroked Anna’s arm above the bandage. “You came to rescue me today,” she said softly, reflecting back on the day’s adventures with relief and sadness.

Anna smiled. “I did. And I haven’t even been to any judo classes like you have!”

“Jujutsu.”

“Whatever,” she giggled. Her expression turned more serious. “So… um…”

Elsa rolled her eyes as she propped herself up on one arm. “Yes, dear sister? What did you do?”

“Your older self - which is still weird to say after all these years - was asking how close we were, and I, uh…” Anna glanced out the window, pausing as she worried her lower lip.

“You…?” Elsa booped her sister on the nose to call her attention back to the conversation.

Anna blushed. “I think I might have implied we were more.. involved… than we actually are.”

Elsa squinted at the redhead. “Meaning?”

“I might have implied… we were… umm… intimate,” Anna cringed, ducking her head.

“You what?” Elsa shouted, smacking Anna’s good shoulder. “Like… oh my god, Anna, why?” she said, straining to hold in her laughter as she faked outrage with poor success. “What made you say that?”

Anna ducked her head under the covers and mumbled something unintelligible.

Elsa pulled up the blankets. “I didn’t quite get that, dear sister,” she laughed, resting her forehead against Anna’s. Her little sister’s lie of omission wasn’t terribly scandalous; they’d kissed and hugged plenty, and had experimented a little with hands in different places as they hugged, but that was the extent of their intimacy. They’d talked about doing more, but hadn’t gone especially far, mostly because Elsa spent most of her time at university.

“I said…” her blush reached the tips of her ears, “maybe because I want it to be true.”

Elsa let out a breath of relief and grinned hungrily at her sister. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to ask, Anna.” She removed her nightgown and turned off the lights.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

The sisters finally consummate their relationship. Originally, I had written this scene to be earlier in the story, but I wasn’t super comfortable with writing any kind of intimate relations with an underage character, so it had to wait until Anna was over 18 :)

And yes, Hans is dead.

* * *

### Join The Party

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	15. Praying for Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So what you're saying is that my next leap could be a one-way trip?"

# Episode 14: Praying for Time

_Groom Lake, Nevada, 2022_

The blue lightning faded away, leaving Elsa in a darkened, empty cafeteria where she’d vanished just after lunch. She made her way back to the observation room, finding her sweatpants and robe on her workstation.

 _That’s weird. This trip should have been 160 minutes if the durations are doubling like Kai said_ , she thought. She looked at the clock; it was nearly midnight and no one was in the facility, far more time than should have passed. Mildly concerned, she gathered her belongings and made her way back to her rooms at the barracks. Nothing else seemed out of place, so after an hour or two of tossing and turning, she managed to fall asleep.

The next morning, she woke to find the world as she left it; with her coffee in hand, she made her way back to the laboratory where the team was anxiously awaiting her. Kai and Gerda appeared to be fussing over scanning equipment while Kristoff rolled his chair from workstation to workstation, looking at readings with tired, red eyes and sipping his coffee.

“Doctor Beckett! Are you all right?” Kai rushed up to her as soon as she entered the room, already beginning his scans as Gerda inspected her for additional injuries.

Elsa held her arms up as the crew swarmed around her. “Yes, yes, I’m fine everyone. Thank you - I’m fine. Really. Gooshie, what happened with this trip? I reappeared at midnight last night, way past the 2 hour mark,” she asked.

“We don’t know,” Kristoff exclaimed angrily, looking at the scientists. “These two said you’d be back exactly 160 minutes later, and when that didn’t happen, we waited for a few hours more. No one has explained to me what the hell is going on!” He clutched his coffee mug in a vice-like grip, haggard and drawn out. Despite it being the next day, he looked like he hadn’t slept at all.

“Kristoff, what-” she started, then simply grabbed him by the elbow. “We’ll be right back,” she said over her shoulder to the baffled scientists.

Once they were far enough down a utility corridor, she spun on him, impatience written all over her face. “Okay, Kristoff. Spill. What the hell is going on with you? You look like shit.”

He cast his eyes to the floor. “I… I’m under a lot of pressure, Elsa. You know that. Weselton’s wanting faster results, and- and this whole time travel investigation is really slowing that down,” he mumbled.

Elsa reached out to touch his bicep and watched in shock as he flinched from her touch. “Bullshit, Kristoff. I don’t need 7 doctorate degrees to know that you’re not telling me the truth. Something’s burning you from the inside faster than the summer sun on a snowman.”

“I- I- I just can’t, Elsa. Not now. I… I’m not ready. I promise, I promise I’ll tell you, okay? Just… not now. Not when I think you’re… never mind. Let’s get through this experiment and then I promise I’ll tell you everything, from the beginning. Please?” he begged, staring at her with watery eyes.

She exhaled. “All right. I’m going to hold you to that. But I’m telling you right now, you look like shit, and if you don’t settle up, I’m going to talk to your CO about an early psych eval,” she threatened. “Whatever’s going, you can’t hold it in forever.”

Kristoff nodded glumly. “I know. Can- can we just get back to the lab now, please?”

Elsa glanced at him sideways before nodding and walking back down the corridor. She walked back into the observation room to see Kai and Gerda quietly discussing something. “Gooshie, I think I discovered a couple of things on this last leap.”

“As did I, Doctor Beckett. But please, you first,” he gestured, bowing at the waist.

She giggled at the anachronism of his bow. “All right. We know memories associated with guilt are the trigger that creates these leaps. This last time, when I had resolved the situation and seen Anna safely past what my memory of the original timeline was, a sense of relief washed over me - and that was when I felt time pulling me back in.”

Kai scribbled furiously on his tablet. “Yes, yes, yes. That makes sense, Doctor Beckett. That makes a great deal of sense. Something about the quantum state in your brain interacting with the tachyonic field, triggering the field to change its frequency. Yes, fascinating,” he half-spoke, half-muttered, drawing equations on the screen. “What was the second thing?”

Elsa’s smile faded. “In the original timeline, Hans almost died of an overdose, but survived and was in the car with Anna when she died. This time, I… killed Hans in an act of self-defense.”

The room was suddenly silent. Kristoff was frozen in place, his coffee cup halfway to his mouth, while Kai and Gerda just stared. Long moments passed before Gerda spoke. “Are… you certain, Elsa?”

“Almost certain, yes. But this means that a major event like that can be changed. Someone dying that was a major part of Anna’s life - that has to mean that the final outcome really is on the table, in terms of saving her, right?” Elsa asked, looking at each of the people in the room.

Kai looked up at the ceiling as he did equations in his head. “It… is possible, Doctor Beckett. Of course, you had said that in the new timeline, Anna is not romantically involved with this boyfriend, so in theory, the person may not be as important as the role. Perhaps if she is romantically involved with someone else, that person may take the boyfriend’s role in the accident.”

A wave of nausea swept over Elsa. Kai’s logic made sense; Anna was involved with Hans very early on in the original timeline, and as much as she hated him and how he dragged Anna into more and more trouble, the Anna of her past loved him. Which meant that in the adjusted timeline… she was at risk, the Elsa of Anna’s time. She shook her head. That made no sense - she couldn’t die in the car accident, or else it would create a massive paradox.

 _Is it possible that saving Anna means somehow not saving my younger self?_ she wondered grimly, before she snapped back to the moment and what Kai was talking about.

“It’s a pity we won’t be able to study this more,” he concluded.

Elsa looked at him in alarm. “I’m sorry, Gooshie, what do you mean, we won’t be able to study this more?”

“Ah, yes. That was what I wanted to tell you, Doctor Beckett. According to my scans, the tachyonic field around you has weakened so substantially that perhaps 10% of the particles remain. That is why you vanished for so much longer on this last leap,” he said, reading off the display. He looked up nervously at her, swallowing a lump in his throat as he hesitated. “In fact…”

She rolled her eyes. “Gooshie, spit it out. I’m an adult. I can handle the bad news I see all over your face,” she offered with kindness.

Kai cleared his throat. “Yes, of course. Umm, in fact, should you leap again… I am not confident that the field integrity… that it would be strong enough to… permit you to return.”

“So what you’re saying is that my next leap could be a one-way trip?”

“Yes, but-” he rushed to show his computations, his tablet making all manner of beeping and gurgling sounds. “There’s a 56.4% chance you do return, Doctor Beckett. Those odds are not promising, but they are better than zero, of course.”

Kristoff leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, his unhappiness apparent. “Flip of a coin whether you get trapped in the past or not. That’s a hell of a bet, Elsa.”

She took a deep breath. “So basically, I’ve got one last shot to try and change time, try to save Anna.”

Kai dragged a sheaf of papers over to her. “There’s one other thing. I ran some calculations on the photonic cannon and the oscillator. It may be possible to send a transmission to a point in time as well. I thought it might be worth attempting to reach the past that way first, rather than risk trapping you.”

“Can I ask the obvious question here, guys?” Kristoff said, rubbing the back of his head. “Why can’t Elsa just use the oscillator again like she did the first time? It’s worked once already.”

“Because the tachyonic field would not be the same and could conflict with the one she’s already in, Colonel Calavicci,” Kai said with just a hint of condescension. “Imagine trying to hear the final notes of a song and someone begins playing a new song - or even the same song - from the beginning at full volume.”

“You’d never hear both songs properly.”

Kai snapped his fingers. “Just so, Colonel. The two songs would get muddied together. And in this case, it’s not just songs but Doctor Beckett’s body and soul that could be irreversibly scrambled.”

Elsa grimaced. “So… my next trip is my last, regardless. Whether I come back or not is the question. I’m not sure using the photonic cannon would have any substantial effect, Gooshie, mainly because I don’t know anyone would be looking for such an unorthodox method of communication. I’d be out of phase with everything there. I think it’s… I have one shot left.”

Kai nodded and placed his tablet on the desk, looking at Elsa seriously. “Indeed, Doctor Beckett. Perhaps you should take the day and contemplate the situation?”

“There’s nothing to contemplate, Gooshie.” She gave him a small smile, patting him on the arm before looking at the rest of the group. “I know exactly where and when I need to go. The day Anna dies. And I need to go before I accidentally remember something else that could send me elsewhere. But before I do…”

She hugged Kai warmly. “Thank you, Gooshie, for being such an amazing project leader with me. I couldn’t have done this - any of this - without you.”

Another hug. “And you, Gerda. Thank you for looking after me the last couple of years, keeping me from imploding. I owe you so much.” She squeezed the grey-haired doctor tightly, a tear dripping down each of their cheeks. Gerda had practically been a second mother to her the last couple of years.

She saved the strongest hug for last. “You’re a good friend, Kristoff. I hope I come back, and if I do, we’re having that conversation. If I don’t, promise me you will talk to someone, okay?”

Kristoff squeezed his eyes shut, willing his tears to remain imprisoned and failing miserably at it. “I… Elsa… thank you. That’s the only thing I can think of to say. Thank you for everything. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I-” he stuttered, trying to speak his mind, but his inner demons won the battle. “I’m sorry.”

She patted him on the shoulder one last time before closing her eyes. This last memory required no effort at all to conjure; she’d spent the better part of a decade trying NOT to remember it every single day. Like an old lover’s song that’s never far from memory, she remembered the day Anna died.

It was just after Anna’s 21st birthday, when she’d come home, high as a kite, and announced she was going to marry Hans. Elsa had castigated her fiercely, calling Hans every name in the book and shouting that Anna had no idea what true love was, but marrying your dealer almost certainly wasn’t it. They’d both screamed at each other for an hour before Anna stomped off in rage.

She’d turned one last time to excoriate Elsa before she said she was going to a Panic at the Disco concert with Hans, and that Elsa had better not be at their parents’ house when she got back.

The pain of that day stabbed into Elsa’s heart as though it had just happened. She never moved on from that day, not really, despite all her accomplishments in the 20 years since. This was her last chance to set things right.

Familiar tingling began at her fingertips, and she smiled, looking up at her team. “I’ll see you… when I see you,” she said. Just as she started to wave goodbye, her eyes widened.

The lightning was yellow, not blue.

Before she could react, time pulled her away.

In the silence afterwards, the scientists walked out of the room, somber in their acknowledgement of the sacrifice Elsa was making. Kristoff remained frozen where he was, staring at the oscillator and the empty space Elsa had left behind, despair and anguish written all over his face.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

This is it for Elsa. One shot, one last opportunity to save Anna from certain death. But she’s in for a surprise - Anna will not be her next stop on her journey.

* * *

### Join The Party

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	16. The Bar at the End of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "...you must also be prepared to take a life, Elsa. The universe must stay in balance, in motion, and events must happen mostly as they did."

# Episode 15: The Bar at the End of Time

_A bar_

With a flash of golden lightning, Elsa appeared in a bar. As she looked around, it wasn’t just any bar. It was the bar in her hometown, the one that her father used to love frequenting in his younger years. Dark wood paneling straight from the 1970s, mirrors everywhere, and a shuffleboard table along the side that had seen better days. Little Keno pads and pencils sat at each table with a TV in the corner showing that hour’s winning numbers. The slightest hint of cigarette smoke wafted in the air, and the bar’s jukebox played Steve Miller Band endlessly.

Elsa looked around and saw a face she’d not seen in decades. She instinctively reached down to cover her body, only to find she was still fully clothed.

“Pabbie?” she asked, startled at the bartender.

The gruff, portly gentleman with wild, disheveled hair stood behind the bar in his white bartender’s outfit, drying some glass beer mugs as he regarded his newest arrival. “Ah, Elsa. Fancy seeing you again. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? What’ll you have?”

She took a seat at the bar, confusion reflected on her face. “Uh… Rolling Rock, I guess.”

Pabbie poured her a 12 ounce glass of beer and set it in front of her along with some peanuts that had probably seen better days. “You look a little lost, Elsa. Are you okay?”

“Not… I’m not really sure. Where- what’s the date?” She looked around, seeing some sitcom playing on the ancient TV hanging in the corner of the bar.

Pabbie laughed, a deep, resonant sound like an echo in a canyon. “Time works a little differently here, I suppose. In terms you’d understand, for the moment it’s December 21, 1980.”

Elsa frowned, even more confused. “That- that’s my birthday. The day I- I was born today.”

The bartender chuckled, his belly shaking with the motion. “Indeed it is. In fact, it was just about 17 minutes ago,” he said, looking at the watch on his wrist.

“But this… this isn’t where I’m supposed to be! I’m supposed to be saving Anna!” She paused, the gravity of the situation hitting her. “Wait… how do you know who I am? I’ve just been born? We don’t meet for another… 21 years!” She reflected momentarily on the memory. Agnar had taken her to the bar on her 21st birthday to celebrate, but she’d refused anything to drink, blaming alcohol on Anna’s continued decline.

She’d come back a few years later, on the night of the first anniversary of Anna’s death, and had tried to blot out the pain for an evening unsuccessfully, just making herself sick in the process. She’d gotten more comfortable with alcohol after her time in Oslo, but it was still something she reserved mostly for special occasions.

Pabbie nodded. “I do know who you are, Elsa. I also know why you’re here.” He polished another glass as he regarded her, the only patron in the bar at the moment.

She took a sip of the beer in front of her, noting that despite the name, it tasted nothing like the Rolling Rock she remembered. This beer actually had something resembling a beer-like flavor to it. “All right, I’ll bite. Why am I here, Pabbie? Why am I in a bar on the day of my birth instead of the worst day-” she paused, correcting herself and concealing her emotions, “a very important day in time?”

Pabbie put down the beer glass and picked up a shot glass, cleaning it with the towel draped over his shoulder. He took a deep breath before his jet black eyes met hers. “I hope you’re prepared for what you have done, Elsa,” he said solemnly. “Trying to change time is not for the faint of heart. Everything you have done up until now has been mostly harmless. Time has proceeded as it always has, for the most part.”

Elsa acknowledged the truth of his statement. Her efforts had led to qualitative changes in her past life and Anna’s life, but the major events - a difficult childbirth, loneliness, trouble in school, a fight at prom - were all fundamentally the same. The only significant departure from the original timeline was Hans dying on her last leap.

“Time is not so easily changed, Elsa. What you are about to do, what you want to do… is not without consequences. You hope to be saving a life, yes?” he asked, turning the glass over in his rough hands.

“Anna’s life, yes,” she said earnestly.

“Then you must also be prepared to take a life, Elsa. The universe must stay in balance, in motion, and events must happen mostly as they did. When the time comes, you will need to make a difficult choice. Choose well, and you will save your sister. Choose poorly, and you may make things worse than they were in the past,” he intoned with gravity.

Elsa swallowed, the lump in her throat feeling like a boulder. “So for Anna to live… someone else has to die. I was wondering about that. The younger version of me might have to die?”

Pabbie shook his head. “Of course not. That would create a paradox - THE paradox, if you will. No, you will know when the time comes, Elsa, and it is at that point that you must weigh all your choices carefully and make an irreversible decision. Time must remain in balance. Life must remain in balance. Remember what happened in the original accident, and know that the books must be balanced at the end of the day. But be warned: that which has made your journey possible so far will not be your ally at that critical moment.”

Elsa wrinkled her nose in confusion, trying to commit the nearly non-sensical words to memory. “A- all right. Thank you, I suppose, for the guidance. I should get going, I guess?”

“You may as well finish your drink, Elsa,” Pabbie chuckled.

She smiled weakly and took another sip. “All right. While I do that… where am I? This isn’t actually your place, the one in Eagle Valley, is it?”

Pabbie picked up a Pilsner glass and cleaned it off. “No, no it’s not. This is a place… in between. Perhaps even outside of what you consider time. It’s a resting place, a place for the weary traveler to have a beer, put their feet up, and catch their breath.”

“Where is everyone?” She looked around. The tables and booths could easily accommodate dozens of people, yet she was the only person in the place.

“It’s a bit early for drinking, Elsa,” Pabbie chuckled, nodding at the clock that read 6 AM.

“But you’re here?”

He looked squarely at her, his obsidian eyes boring into her soul momentarily. “I have always been here,” he pronounced, his voice booming throughout the empty bar. Another glass cleaned, he picked up a pair of thick-handled dimple mugs.

Elsa looked around more carefully. Memorabilia covered the walls from all over the world, from Norway to Cambridge to Eagle Valley. She quirked an eyebrow. Despite Pabbie’s insistence it was December of 1980, the memorabilia was from different periods in the future - her future. With a start, she realized everything was from her own life, from each time period in her life. The Cambridge memorabilia was all university stuff from MIT. The Norwegian decor was from her time in Oslo.

She shook off the shock of her realization and turned back to the portly bartender. “I never asked you- the real you, I suppose. Why do they call you Pabbie?”

Pabbie laughed again and pointed at a lit sign above the bar. “I used to be the best regional salesman in all of Indiana for Pabst Blue Ribbon, so much so that the Midwest Vice President nicknamed me Pabbie. After I retired, the name just kind of stuck.”

“I only ever knew you as Pabbie. Papa called you that when he came here. What’s your real name?” She took another sip, almost emptying the glass.

“Al. Didn’t you ever wonder why the bar was named Al’s Place even though you knew me as Pabbie?” he chuckled. “For a genius, sometimes you’re not terribly observant, Elsa. Be careful with that in your travels.”

Elsa finished the last mouthful of Rolling Rock and pushed her glass forward on the bar. “The lightning… it was yellow when I leaped this most recent time. Is that because… because I came here instead?”

Pabbie nodded. “Yup. As I said, this place is… in between. When you leave here, you’ll get to where you were going.” He inclined his head towards the door. “Good luck, Elsa.”

She grinned and waved. “Thank you for the advice, Pabbie. I- will I see you again?”

“That all depends on the choices you make, Elsa,” he smiled, picking up a stout glass. “Make good choices, choices from your heart, choices from love, not guilt.”

Elsa turned and opened the door to the bar, vanishing in a flash of blue lightning.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

For those who are Quantum Leap fans, this should feel very familiar. This is the bar Sam leaps into in the series finale, with Al the Bartender - who we’re led to believe has some serious insights about how Quantum Leap works - guiding Sam. Instead of Bruce McGill as the portly bartender, we get Pabbie and a retcon about how Pabbie got his name.

* * *

### Join The Party

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	17. Breakaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She did some fast math in her head. They'd collide in less than 30 seconds, and Anna would die."

_Warnings: alcohol and substance abuse, major character death, suicide_

# Episode 16: Breakaway

_Eagle Valley, Indiana, 2004_ _Elsa is 42 and 24, Anna is 21_

Elsa appeared once more in her childhood home’s laundry room in a flash of blue lightning. Wasting no time, she grabbed some of Iduna’s dirty clothes and got dressed, then walked out into the living room where Agnar and Iduna were watching an episode of Lost in the living room. Both jumped in surprise.

Agnar clutched his chest, catching his breath. “Elsa! You nearly gave me a heart attack! What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with Anna right now.”

“I’m supposed- Papa, it’s me. The older me, not your Elsa. Put your glasses on,” she chided, then added with alarm, “Where is Anna?”

Iduna nervously looked at Agnar. “Anna… you- well, the two of you went to up to the city for that concert.”

Elsa felt panic creeping up on her. “What city? What concert?”

Agnar stood up and walked to the kitchen cabinet, opening one of the doors. A calendar swung into view, and he peered at it carefully. “Ah, it’s some indie band I’ve never heard of … Panic at the Disco? Up in Indianapolis.”

Panic went from creeping to clawing at her soul. She was too late to save Anna; Anna was already at the concert and would be killed on the way home. “Papa! I told you not to let her get into a car on her birthday! What time is the concert?”

He squinted again. “You said not to let her drive! You- Elsa’s driving. Anyway, it’s… 8 PM? I think that’s what’s written on here.”

Elsa looked at the clock. It was 9 PM now. She did some quick math in her head. It was a 90 minute drive from Eagle Valley to Indianapolis, but if she floored it, she could make it there. “Papa, there’s no time to explain. I need to borrow your car right now.”

“Elsa, what- what do you mean? I don’t understand?” he sputtered before he noticed a delicate hand on his shoulder.

Iduna stood just behind him, looking at Elsa in dread. The look on Elsa’s face was exactly the same as the one she had when Anna had gotten hit with a softball in the head at 8 years old. It was the look of a parent, a caretaker who was panicking that they had failed or were about to fail in their only duty: to protect their loved ones.

“It’s tonight, isn’t it Elsa?” she asked softly.

Elsa nodded. “Anna will die tonight if I don’t save her. Papa, the car, please,” she insisted.

“But- but-” Agnar continued to stammer. Iduna walked past him, grabbed the car keys off the tray on the center of the dining room table, and pressed them into Elsa’s hands.

“Go, Elsa. Go save Anna.”

* * *

“ _As I’m pacing the pews in a church corridor, And I can’t help but to hear, No, I can’t help but to hear an exchanging of words_ ,” Elsa sang loudly as she drove Anna’s Kia Forte south on Interstate 69.

Anna belted out the next verse of the song. “ _What a beautiful wedding", says a bridesmaid to a waiter, And, yes, but what a shame, what a shame the poor groom’s bride is a whore_ ”. She cackled with laughter at the lyrics as Elsa turned off the interstate onto Highway 144 towards Eagle Valley.

Both sisters were elated after a fun evening out at the indie band’s tiny concert at the Slippery Noodle in Indianapolis. They were celebrating Anna’s 21st birthday and legal drinking age, with Elsa as the designated driver so Anna could have her first drinks ever.

Years ago, Elsa - Big Elsa, she called her to keep her separate from her sister - had warned her not to get in a car and drive on her 21st birthday, because she would be killed in a car accident. Over the years, she’d discussed that ominous prophecy with her sister, and they made a pact that at no point on her 21st birthday would she get behind the wheel. With Elsa driving, everything would be safe and she’d avoid that fateful accident that caused her big sister to break the laws of time and space just to apologize to her.

* * *

The drunk 22 year old pulled out of the Thirsty Turtle unsteadily. He’d had a few beers and a shot or two, and when the bartender had suggested maybe he wait a little while before driving home, he’d shrugged off the advice. He was fine, and besides, his trusty F-150 had never let him down.

A few beers was nothing to worry about anyway. He felt warm and only a little fuzzy; a good night at the bar always made him feel like time was slowing down, like he could finally relax and be himself. He dug around in the glove compartment for the little white tablets he knew were in there, finally finding one and popping it in his mouth. The upper would counteract the alcohol and he’d be in great shape to drive in no time.

He put on his blinker and merged onto Highway 144 northbound. Okay, maybe the shot he did wasn’t the best idea, but he didn’t feel like it was all that bad. Things just felt like they were moving a little more slowly than usual. Moments later, the first head rush from the upper hit him. He clumsily stepped on the gas pedal and smiled to himself. Now things were moving.

* * *

Elsa tore up the pavement in her father’s Honda Civic, racing up Interstate 69 as quickly as she could. She groaned in frustration forty minutes later as road construction forced her off the highway at the Martinsville exit, putting her onto State Highway 144.

She knew the roads of Indiana like the back of her hand. She’d need to stay on Highway 44 for a few miles until it joined with State Highway 144. Once she got on 144, she’d be able to take it back to Interstate 69 and avoid the rest of the road construction.

Dread filled her stomach. She’d just passed a sign for Creekside and Hopewell, only 10 miles away. She knew that name, too.

Hopewell, ironically named, was the town where Anna died. She had to get to Anna before Anna reached the town.

* * *

Elsa and Anna drove down Highway 144, singing along to Kelly Clarkson’s latest hit as they headed home. Anna was sobering up after her couple of beers and a single shot, belting at the top of her lungs with the radio.

“ _I’ll spread my wings, and I’ll learn how to fly, I’ll do what it takes till I touch the sky, And I’ll make a wish, Take a chance, Make a change, And breakawaaaaaaaaay!_ ” she sang before turning to look at her sister.

“Hey Elsa?”

“Yeah, sweetie?” Elsa smiled, briefly looking at her sister and lover. They’d gone far beyond sisters a couple of years ago, and Elsa had never been happier in her entire life. She had it all in Anna - friend, lover, sister, confidante. Warmth and joy bubbled up inside her as she regarded Anna.

“What do you suppose this song is really about?”

Elsa reached out a hand and patted Anna’s thigh. “Growing up and moving on in life, leaving behind the small town mindset, I think. Kind of like what we’re doing. You just graduated from IU, I’m moving into a big role in my lab in Cambridge. We grow up - but we don’t forget the friends we make along the way.”

Anna grinned. “Friends and lovers, you mean,” she awkwardly winked before bursting into laughter at her own silliness. After a few moments, she looked out the front window and scrunched her brow. “Hey Elsa… that car up ahead… isn’t it on the wrong side of the road?”

Both sisters looked forward to see a wildly weaving truck in the distance.

* * *

Elsa tore down Highway 44. She tapped the steering wheel with nervous tension as she saw the interchange with Highway 144 in the distance. Filled with nervous tension, she turned on the radio to distract herself and hoped there were no police on patrol. She was going far, far above the 45 mile per hour speed limit.

The speakers in the Civic burst to life. “ _Out of the darkness and into the sun, I won’t forget all the ones that I love, I gotta take a risk, take a chance, make a change, And breakaway_ ”. She grinned softly to herself. Anna had hated this song. Then again, her Anna had hated almost all pop music; when she was sober, she’d accuse pop music of being mind-numbing dreck that perverted what real music was all about.

Elsa saw the pickup truck weaving up Highway 144 a few moments later. The driver was clearly unable to control the vehicle and was driving at least 60 miles an hour, possibly faster. Elsa turned her head to the left and saw a Kia headed southbound towards the weaving pickup truck.

Anna.

This was how it happened. This was how Anna died. The hit and run, the unknown driver. Anna would be flung from the car in the collision, her body broken.

She did some fast math in her head. They’d collide in less than 30 seconds, and Anna would die.

Unless.

She finished the calculation in her head and turned up the radio.

“ _I’ll spread my wings, and I’ll learn how to fly Though it’s not easy to tell you goodbye I gotta take a risk, take a chance, make a change And breakaway._ ”

In that moment, Elsa felt the weight of the world lift from her shoulders. Guilt withered away, and her heart overflowed with happiness. Her lips moved of their own volition as she sang along.

Elsa broke into a joyful smile and floored the gas.

* * *

Anna screamed. “Elsa! Oh my god, there’s another car coming!”

Elsa jerked the wheel hard to the right as a Honda Civic tore through the intersection ahead and t-boned the weaving pickup truck just feet from their car. She skidded past the two cars, narrowly missing the Civic, as the shriek of metal colliding with metal echoed behind them.

Anna had turned around in her seat and was inconsolably crying. Elsa pulled the Kia over to the side of the road and got out. Not 500 feet away, two mangled cars were crumpled, barely recognizable as vehicles, a small fire starting underneath the hood of the truck. Both were overturned, and moments later, the acrid smell of gasoline drifted on the wind to her.

The vehicles had collided and slammed into a service station.

She shouted for Anna to get down inside the car as she dove for the ground.

The damaged vehicles and the service station exploded in a massive fireball. Anna’s Kia was far enough away that only the paint melted a little; the blast hadn’t damaged the vehicle otherwise. She ran to the passenger side and pulled Anna out, then dug her Motorola RAZR from her purse and dialed 911.

* * *

After giving their statement to the police, the sisters finally arrived home an hour after they’d told their parents they’d be back. Agnar and Iduna were pacing frantically inside the house and practically tackled them the moment they walked in the door.

“Anna! Thank God you’re all right,” her mother tearfully hugged her. “I… I thought I’d lost you,” she sobbed. Anna squeezed her mother tightly, finally allowing herself to break down in her mother’s arms.

“It’s all right, Papa. There was a terrible accident, but we weren’t hurt,” Elsa said, hugging her father. “We’re safe, we’re home safe. Anna’s safe. Anna didn’t die today.”

Agnar looked out the window. “What about Elsa?”

Time stood still for a moment.

“Elsa?” Anna turned, shocked. “Wait, Elsa was here? Where is she?”

Heaving sobs wracked Iduna’s body. “Elsa… Elsa came to try and save you,” she wailed. “I- I- I condemned my baby girl to die! I- I- I gave her the keys.”

“Elsa… Elsa was here…” Her eyes met her sister’s as they both realized the implications of what had happened. Anna collapsed to the floor, shattered at the realization of what her sister had done for her.

“The other car… I knew it looked familiar.” Elsa whispered, stunned. “That… was me. From the future.” She numbly walked into the living room and turned on the local TV news to see a grainy video of the car crash scene. Firefighters were still battling the blaze at the gas station as the reporter glanced over her shoulder while talking to the camera.

"*Authorities in Franklin tonight are investigating a deadly car crash just south of Hopewell in Johnson County. Two cars collided with each other and then a gas station just off State Road 44. One driver has been established to have been 22-year old Kristoff Calavicci of Grissom, Indiana. The other driver and vehicle have not been identified yet."

Elsa turned back to her sister, sinking to the floor and holding Anna in her arms. “I… the other me… saved you. Saved us. She must have known that was the car that would have killed you and…” she choked back a sob of her own, “And she sacrificed herself so we would be okay.”

Anna burrowed her face into her sister’s shoulder, sobbing. “She- she loved me so much that she gave everything to save me.”

* * *

The police arrived the next day, enough of the Honda Civic salvageable to identify the vehicle and its owner. Agnar did a credible job convincing them that the car had been stolen from the garage by mostly telling the truth. A mysterious stranger had shown up at their house, scared them, then taken the keys and driven off. The only truth-bending on his part was that the stranger wore a ski mask, so no one got a look at the intruder’s face.

Elsa was shaken most of all. Every time she looked in the mirror, she wondered if the person in the reflection was her, or her mirror image from the future. Would she suffer the same fate? Would she have done the same thing? She desperately longed for a few more minutes with her other self to ask these questions.

Anna, on the other hand, found fearlessness. Knowing that her sister - in any timeline - loved her so much that she would willingly give her life to save Anna conferred on her a deep sense of purpose. She had to be worthy of the new lease on life given to her by her sister, to do something with her life that honored Elsa’s sacrifice.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

Elsa did it. She saved Anna’s life at the expense of her own and Kristoff’s. Kudos to those of you who figured out from very early on that Kristoff killed Anna in the original timeline; I teased that with the empty beer cans in his F-150 way back in Chapter 1.

What happens to Elsa and Anna with their new lease on life?

* * *

### Join The Party

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	18. Time After Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So…” Mattias looked puzzled at the conclusion of Anna’s tale, “what DID happen to the other Elsa?”

# Episode 17: Time After Time

_University of Oslo, 2020_

“Doctor Beckett! Doctor Beckett!” Doctor Kai Gushman rushed into the quantum physics lab, his tablet beeping, blinking, and gurgling.

“Gooshie, I am never going to convince you to call me by my name, am I?”

Kai laughed, a broad grin on his face. “No, Doctor. It wouldn’t be proper.”

“I swear, you could be a character from some medieval castle or something. All right, what have you got?”

“The latest results from the medical scans you ordered, Doctor. Our most recent test run on the laboratory mice indicates that exposing a living creature to the energy of a quantum superposition is safe and shows no genetic drift of any kind. This is excellent news, Doctor Beckett! With this, our project is one step closer to human trials,” the portly scientist beamed.

“That is good news. Let’s go tell my wife, shall we?”

Doctor Anna Beckett donned her lab coat and grabbed a sheaf of papers as she walked with Kai down to the particle accelerator laboratory. She smiled to herself as she walked along the sterile metal corridor. For the last twenty years, she’d been on a mission with her beloved sister to solve a mystery.

As early as she could remember, she’d been visited by a version of her older sister as an adult, at various times in her life. Eighteen years ago to the day, that version of her sister had perished in a car accident that very nearly might have killed Anna.

She’d grieved, but the medical examiner and police were unable to find any traces of the doppelganger’s body in the wreckage, though they found the charred remains of the other driver. Police reports indicated the other driver was badly intoxicated at the time, and had it not been for her sister’s doppelganger, Anna was certain she would have been killed.

The thought of the accident still sent shivers down her spine decades later.

Anna walked down the final flight of metal stairs into the particle accelerator lab, swiping her access card to the control room with Kai just behind her. At the center console in what could have been mission control for a space program, her sister examined complex formulas on a workstation with a gigantic screen.

“Hey Elsa! Gooshie told me the latest good news - no drift!” she chirped, bouncing across the room to hug her sister.

Elsa smiled and kissed Anna quickly on the lips. “That’s wonderful news, Anna! We’re a step closer to unraveling this mystery. I have a theory,” she grinned, hugging Anna tightly, “that if time functions like a curve, almost, then something going back in time could change time’s flow a little bit. Not much, not on any grand scale. It’d be like moving rocks around in a river.”

“So the splash that a rock made while moving wouldn’t last very long?” her sister asked.

“Yes and no. I think time can’t be broken, any more than we can break gravity, but we can make enough subtle alterations that the overall flow does change, just like an eroding riverbank can eventually change the course of a river,” Elsa said, looking out the control room window at a room with a small tungsten ring suspended by a control apparatus and a beam projector. “If we’re lucky, this technology will give us the ability to view where the river was at any arbitrary point in time.”

The sisters walked out of the control room, leaving Kai behind to enter his data in his workstation. Anna looked in awe at the laboratory setup. With a grant from CERN, they’d been able to afford constructing this laboratory with Elsa’s genius ideas, to prove that time wasn’t necessarily a linear construct. She reached out with her right hand and laced her fingers with Elsa’s left hand, feeling the gold on Elsa’s ring finger.

Anna always beamed at that feeling. After the accident, Anna had chosen to go to Europe with her sister and pursue her graduate studies, deciding to take up medicine. Elsa had dove deep into her physics research to better understand how another version of herself had traveled through time.

About 4 years into their combined studies, their parents had gone on a transatlantic cruise from New York to Oslo, planning to visit the sisters and enjoy their retirement. The ship was lost somewhere in the North Atlantic; to this day, no one had been able to adequately explain what happened, especially in an era of ubiquitous GPS and satellite tracking. They’d settled up their parents’ affairs and sold the house in Eagle Valley, relocating to Norway permanently.

A year later, Norway became one of the first nations to legalize same-sex marriage, and since most people already assumed based on their shared last name that they were married anyway, they’d made it official. Both Anna and her sister had left any guilt about their relationship behind long before that, and simply introduced themselves as wives to anyone who asked.

Anna pulled Elsa into a warm embrace, leaning against the metallic wall of the room. “This is so exciting, Elsa! How long do you think it’ll be before we can run a test on something bigger than a mouse?”

Elsa’s lips grazed Anna’s before settling against her sister’s neck. “I don’t know, Anna. Building this setup beyond what we’ve got here just isn’t in the budget, you know? Still, I feel like we’re really close to understanding how all this works.”

She pulled away to stare into Anna’s gorgeous teal eyes. “I can’t thank you enough for all your support over the years, Anna. You- you gave up everything to work with me, to pursue this crazy dream and understand how and why everything happened that night in Indiana. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

Anna melted in her sister’s arms. “You’ll always have me. After all, I’ve really always had you looking after me in one way or another since the day I was born. Now let’s get back to-” she turned her head, seeing one of her staff walking towards them. “Gerda? What is it?”

An older woman, Doctor Gerda Beeks was a sub-investigator on the project and Anna’s right hand. Truth be told, Anna thought Gerda could easily have been a principal investigator or even chief medical officer, but she was grateful to have her expertise in any capacity.

“Doctor Beckett - Elsa,” Gerda said, smiling politely. “There’s… someone here to see you. Says he’s interested in our research. He’s waiting in the visitor area.”

“Thank you, Gerda,” Elsa smiled. She turned to her sister. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere,” she joked as she kissed Anna.

Elsa walked down the hall to the visitor area, a secure room designed to keep people (and mostly their outside dirt) from the rest of the facility. She took off her laboratory coat and scrubs, tied her golden hair back in a ponytail, then entered the visitor room.

A man in a crisp green military uniform stood up, his cap in hand. “Doctor Elsa Beckett?” he asked with a rich, mellifluous voice.

Elsa nodded. “That’s me. Can I help you?”

The soldier smiled warmly and reached out to shake hands. “I hope so, Doctor Beckett. My name is Lieutenant Colonel Destin Mattias, and I’ve heard about the research you’re doing here. The Department of Defense back home is very interested in your work, and would be interested in sponsoring it, if you’d like a partner on the project.”

She arched an eyebrow at the seemingly friendly soldier, his grey hair offsetting his dark skin and brilliant smile. “I have a partner, my wife Anna. She’s my principal co-investigator.”

Mattias nodded. “I understand. I was more thinking about funding and direction. The Department of Defense would be able to given you substantially more budget and resources, if you’d like to continue your work with us? We even have a special facility to help scale up research like yours, out in Groom Lake, Nevada.”

“And what exactly would we be doing there? No offense, Colonel, but building weapons of mass destruction isn’t something I’m particularly comfortable doing with my life,” Elsa said, eyeing him warily.

Mattias gave a brilliant, charming, white-toothed smile. “Why, continuing your research, of course.”

Elsa’s sixth sense twigged. How did a US government official even know what she was studying? She was careful, making sure that her academic publishing talked only about the quantum superposition aspects of her work, never the timeline research portion. Anna was even more tight-lipped about their research; any inquiries she got, she deferred to Elsa.

Uncomfortable in the long pause, Mattias broke the silence. “Look, we’ve read your papers and you’re years ahead of anyone else on quantum superposition. Your work in the field has been astonishing. And yes, there is a military application for it, but think of how fast it would advance your work. You could build one of these-” he waved his arms around the room, “facilities to gigantic scale.”

“I don’t want to build weapons. That’s not what I want to see my life’s work become,” Elsa said firmly.

“I understand. Okay, listen, what we really need - and I shouldn’t be telling you this without some kind of paperwork, but I get the sense you’re a trustworthy person - is help with quantum computing. That’s what the project is. We’re calling it Project Q,” stage-whispered Mattias earnestly. “We’re not trying to blow up the world or anything crazy. We’re trying to find a more secure way to send messages. You know this as well as I do, Doctor - quantum computing is going to wreck cryptography.”

Elsa sighed. The colonel was correct. Quantum computing made child’s play out of decrypting conventional communications. If that was truly the scope of the project, she could live with that - and being able to expand her research (and her budget) was no small thing. She mulled over the pros and cons before looking at the soldier.

“Okay, here are my conditions, Colonel. My team, my project. We stick strictly to quantum communications and cryptography. If there’s even a whiff of weaponization, we walk.” She looked at Mattias expectantly.

Mattias grinned wider, proffering his hand. “You got it, Doctor.”

* * *

_Groom Lake, Nevada, 2022_

“Doctor Beckett! DOCTOR BECKETT! It’s not safe! You have to shut down the quantum oscillator!” screamed Kai over the din of the particle accelerator, now one of the lead scientists on Project Q.

Elsa turned to her controls in the observation room and powered down the quantum oscillator, its tungsten rings spinning so fast that they appeared to be a solid metal sphere. Blue and yellow sparks arced all over the test range.

Kai raced to Elsa’s side, his trusty tablet in hand. “Doctor Beckett, something is interfering with the test. Look here-” he pointed at a complicated wave diagram, “-and here. There’s something else currently occupying our superposition target!”

Anna looked over from her workstation, confused. “That… that shouldn’t be possible, should it?”

Elsa shook her head. “The odds of something else being at that exactly place, in that exact phase are so low that you’d have a better chance of being struck by lightning inside a windowless shopping mall.”

Her heart sank a little. This was the last major test of their experiment which would prove that Project Q could send a message securely through the quantum domain in a closed timelike curve. If she succeeded, they’d be sending a message effectively through time in a way that couldn’t be intercepted or decoded.

She looked once more at the data in Kai’s hand. “Gooshie… this looks almost like we can’t send because… because something else is trying to send. Am I reading that correctly?”

Colonel Mattias, who’d been sitting quietly next to Anna nursing a cup of coffee, elbowed her in the shoulder. “Hey… talk to me. What’s going on? Is it serious?” Over the last two years, the sisters had gotten to know Mattias, and it was his easy demeanor that made the project work so well. He was clear about the military’s objectives, honest, and shielded the team from the bureaucracy as much as he could.

Anna examined the data before answering the soldier. “Something’s blocking our ability to run this test. It’s like we’re trying to call and getting a busy signal because someone’s already on the phone, right Gooshie?”

“Yes, exactly Doctor Beckett,” nodded Kai approvingly, “an astute observation and quite a good analogy.”

“Should we just pick up the phone, then?” Mattias chuckled.

Elsa bit her lower lip in thought, a gesture that never went unnoticed by Anna. “That… isn’t the worst idea I’ve heard, Colonel. Let’s see if we can clear the interference by letting whatever’s in superposition exit out first.” She started keying commands into her workstation, reversing the spin of the oscillator’s tungsten rings.

“All right, everyone. Here we go - safety glasses on!” she shouted with a chuckle, quoting Bill Nye, her favorite childhood entertainer.

The tungsten rings spun once more, pure yellow sparks flying off it as the computers in front of the sisters beeped and blinked with urgency. A brilliant flash of light momentarily blinded everyone, then receded.

A white rectangle of light appeared, as though it were a door opening from the bottom to top, and out stepped the flickering image of a person, dressed almost exactly like Colonel Mattias. He sat up, trying to make out the details of the soldier and gasped in shock. Same rank, same regiment, same medals - whoever this person was, they had almost identical backgrounds and service records.

Elsa and Anna clasped hands, watching the image of the soldier tentatively step through the door, before it closed behind him.

“Elsa?” the image spoke.

“Can he hear you? Does he know who you are? Is he real?” whispered Anna, leaning to her sister’s ear.

Before Elsa could shush her sister or reply, the image of the man continued.

“So… uh, I don’t know exactly how this works. Gooshie said you might not even be the person I know, but I promised you I’d talk to you, so…” the man took a deep, pained breath, “… here I go.”

Kai, hearing his name, was frantically tapping away on his tablet, the sensors glowing brightly as they collected data on this mysterious visitor.

“I suppose I should follow Gooshie’s advice in case you aren’t the Elsa I know. My name is Kristoff Calavicci. I’m a colonel in the Air Force, and we’ve been working on a project together for a couple of years now, Project Q. You used it to go back in time to save your sister, Anna, from dying in a car crash,” the image of Kristoff said glumly.

Anna gasped, hearing this story from a total stranger decades after her sister’s doppelganger first visited her. She pulled Elsa to her, wrapping an arm around her sister’s waist for support. Mattias pulled out a secure phone and started searching for the man’s name.

Kristoff continued. “You just left for what you said was probably a one-way trip to the past. What’s been bothering me, what I promised I would tell you is… I’m pretty sure I was the one who killed your sister.”

The entire room stopped breathing, everyone’s eyes transfixed on the image of Kristoff. Elsa impulsively hugged Anna tightly as Kristoff continued his confession.

“We’ve been through a lot the last couple of years and yeah, the pills you caught me with was because I needed something to keep me steady once I knew where you were going.” The hologram began pacing, walking through the walls of the test chamber into the observation room. “Once we learned you had succeeded in traveling back in time to meet Anna, I did the research and the dates lined up. I was driving my pickup - drunk and high as fuck - home one night when I collided with a tiny little Kia.”

He walked past Mattias and straight through Kai, the portly man gasping as the image imitated a ghost from the past.

“When I told you that I had done some things in the past I was ashamed of, a lot of it was around that. The drugs, the booze, the everything. I was a total fuckup, and the last straw was a hit and run. I swear, Elsa, I didn’t know it was your sister until I looked at the dates and locations earlier.” He paced around the room, the hologram passing through consoles and people alike.

“After the accident, my dad forced me to join the military. He said it was boot camp or jail, and I picked boot camp. That’s how I got involved with the Air Force and how I ultimately ended up here, working with you.” Kristoff’s image pulled out an unseen chair as he collapsed into it. “That’s what I wanted to tell you before you left, Elsa. That’s what was so wrong with me, what was eating at me. And I… I hope when you go back, you can put right what went wrong, that you save Anna… from me. I’m so sorry.”

The white doorway opened up once more and the image of Kristoff walked through it, vanishing.

The silence in the aftermath was deafening. Even Kai’s instruments made no noise. A tear dripped down Elsa’s face; Anna swiped it away with her thumb wordlessly.

It was Gerda who finally broke the silence. “That poor young man,” she murmured, “carrying so much pain around. I hope he got the closure he needed.”

Mattias cleared his throat, looking at this phone. “Unfortunately, Doctor Beeks, the Air Force has no record of a Colonel Kristoff Calavicci, and the only thing I could find was-”

“-A man by the same name who died in a car crash in 2004?” Anna finished.

Mattias’ eyes widened. “Y-yes. How did you know that, Anna?”

Anna rubbed her thumb over Elsa’s knuckles as she recounted the long, strange journey of her life over the span of an hour. Mattias looked more and more shocked as she acted out portions, describing Elsa’s doppelganger, and the fateful night when she should have died.

“So…” Mattias looked puzzled at the conclusion of Anna’s tale, “what DID happen to the other Elsa?”

“They never found a body,” Anna whispered.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

Mattias asks the critical question at the end.

The scene with Kristoff was my nod to Quantum Leap. Because of the mechanism of time travel (from the Time Traveler’s Wife), I couldn’t work in the hologram of Al talking to Sam throughout the series, but I wanted to acknowledge it somehow. At the end of Chapter 13, we saw Kristoff looking at the equipment and Gooshie’s remark that there might be a way to communicate with the future. That’s what happened here.

To the question of whether this is a paradox, I’m interpreting the echoes of the original timeline as Echeverria and Klinkhammer’s resolution. In that answer to Polchinski’s paradox, time resyncs with itself to resolve a paradox. Thus, the echoes of the past would still be knowable, but wouldn’t impact the present because of the sum-over-histories function. You can read more about it in the Wikipedia articles about Novikov’s self-consistency principle.

* * *

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	19. The Bar at the End of Time, Revisited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seeing Anna happy, seeing Anna in love - even if it was with a younger version of her - was worth all the effort and then some. What if she could help fix other people’s lives for the better?

# Episode 18: The Bar at the End of Time, Revisited

_A bar_

With a flash of golden lightning, Elsa appeared in Pabbie’s bar, seemingly unharmed. The bar was crowded this time, patrons milling around or seated at tables. A few folks cheered as the hour’s Keno winners popped up on one of the TVs in the corner. Pabbie was at the bar, pouring drinks for customers as they stepped up. As Elsa approached the bar, he turned and smiled at her.

“Welcome back, Elsa. Drink?”

Discombobulated, she nodded and picked up the lager he’d poured for her, taking a long draft. “Pabbie… what happened? Am I… am I dead?”

Pabbie arched an eyebrow. “Are you?” He poured two shots and passed them down the bar to the patrons at the end.

“I… I don’t know. The last thing I remember was feeling the impact of my car hitting the middle of the truck and then… nothing. I just appeared here.” She looked down at her body, finding no injuries of any kind.

Pabbie gave her a long look. “Remember where I said this bar is, Elsa?”

“In-between.”

He nodded, picking up dirty glasses and putting them in one of the rubber containers under the sink for washing later. “That’s what you are and where you are now, Elsa. You’re in between. You’re out of time - literally.” Pabbie looked up as the bell on the door rang. “Ah, hello gents. Your usual table is waiting.”

Elsa watched the two men sit down at a table near the door, one wearing what looked to be a long grey… dress, it looked like, while the other wore a very fetching suit. Pabbie followed her line of sight. “Those two gents… if you were dead, you’d be having a chat with them instead of me. No, Elsa, you’re still in between. In fact, you’re a bit of an oddity at this bar.”

The bell rang again as another patron came in. Elsa stood up, recognizing him. “Kristoff!” She ran over and was about to hug him when she realized he was much, much younger than when she last same him.

“Um, hi. Do- do I know you?” the young blond man said as he held his hands up, confused.

“I… I’m not sure. I thought I knew you but… you’re different,” she said, confused. She turned back to Pabbie. “What… what’s going on here?”

Pabbie shook his head. “Why don’t you ask him, Elsa?”

Elsa turned back to Kristoff. “What… how did you find me here, Kristoff? And why do you look like this?”

“Look, lady… I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are or how you know my name. Hell, I don’t even know where I am,” he said, turning around to take in the bar. “Nice place, though. Better than the place I was at earlier. Hey, bartender! Can I get a beer?” A full glass stein slide down the bar to him. After a long sip, he turned back to Elsa. “So, who exactly do you think I am?”

“You’re Kristoff Calavicci. You’re a colonel in the Air Force, one of my closest friends, and head of the project I’m working on,” she explained, the words hurrying from her. “Last I saw you, we were saying goodbye because I wasn’t sure I’d make it back.”

Kristoff shook his head. “I’m not in the military,” he started, before a sullen look crossed his face. “At least, not yet. My dad told me if I didn’t get my shit together and stop drinking, he’d force me to enlist.”

“But… that doesn’t make any sense. How- how old are you, Kristoff?”

“Twenty-two. Just turned 22 a few weeks ago, actually.”

Elsa’s eyes widened. This was Kristoff from a different time period. She struggled to piece together the puzzle in her mind. Was this bar somehow a quantum junction of some kind? Could she have accidentally proved the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory instead of her two decades of research on closed timelike curves?

Pabbie shook his head again as though he were listening in on her inner monologue. “That’s not what’s happening here, Elsa.” He turned to look at Kristoff. “What’s the last thing you remember, son?”

Kristoff took a sip of his beer. “Uh, I was heading back home after a night at the bar. I was driving just past Hopewell and the last thing I remember was a little car just slamming into the side of my truck. I felt the impact, felt a whole bunch of pain, a flash of heat, and then I found myself outside the bar door here.”

“No…,” Elsa breathed. “It- it can’t be. You? You were the one who killed Anna? How- how could you?” Rage swelled up inside her heart. “How could you, Kristoff? You knew! You must have known! How could you have killed my sister almost twenty years ago, worked by my side, and never told me?” She beat her fists on his chest as she screamed.

“Hey! Lady, back- back off! I don’t know who Anna is! I didn’t kill anyone!” he exclaimed, bringing his hands in front of his face to protect himself from her blows. “Stop- stop it! I didn’t kill anyone!”

“HOW COULD YOU?” she shrieked, before Pabbie stepped out from behind the bar and firmly pulled her off Kristoff.

“Elsa. Elsa!” he urged as she collapsed in a chair. “He didn’t kill Anna this time because… you killed him. He’s here now because he died.”

“What? Are you saying I’m dead?” Kristoff shouted, spilling his beer. “How- what- what the fuck is happening here?” he shouted, red-faced.

Pabbie took Kristoff by the arm and led him to the table with the two men. “Gents… I believe this young man is who you’re here to speak with?” Both men nodded and gestured for Kristoff to sit down as Pabbie walked back to Elsa, who had her head in her arms, crying.

“How could he, Pabbie? He knew, all that time we worked together.” Her anger evaporated, leaving her only with anguish. She recalled their last conversation, and Kristoff’s evident discomfort. “He… that’s what had him upset, just before I left, isn’t it? He knew where I was leaping to, and he knew I’d discover the truth.”

“Perhaps he knew what you had to do to save your sister?” Pabbie asked, taking the seat next to her at the table and resting his hand on her forearm.

Elsa let her head fall into her hands again. “He… he knew I might have to sacrifice him to save Anna?”

Pabbie moved his hand to her shoulder. “I can’t say for sure, Elsa. But you made a difficult choice - THE difficult choice - and you did it with joy in your heart instead of guilt. You saved Anna - and yourself, I might add, the younger you. Anna did not die in that car crash.”

“But I did,” she mumbled, staring at her hands.

Pabbie grabbed a bowl of pretzels from the bar and put it in the middle of the table. “Well Elsa, that’s the thing. You’re not quite dead. But you’re not quite alive, either. You’re in between. You’re out of time.”

“You keep saying that, Pabbie. What does that mean?” she asked plaintively, looking at his round, wizened face for answers.

Pabbie put the beer on the table. “You tell me, Elsa. You’re the scientist. What has happened here? You saved Anna. Based on what you know, based on your experiments and science, what happens next?”

Elsa picked up a Keno pad and pencil to start drawing. “Anna’s death was the catalyst for my researching this time travel.” She drew a straight line on the paper with a few small marks on it. “Then I went back in time and prevented her death, but killed Kristoff instead… that means no Project Q. That means I’ve… created a paradox,” she groaned.

The bartender chuckled. “In a way, yes. But you managed a spectacular feat, Elsa. The moment that your special particles vanished, which would have blinked you out of existence, you also managed to have your physical body die in a horrific car accident. You timed it perfectly. So what’s left of you, your essence if you will, is neither here nor there. You’re sort of dead, but you’re also something of a remnant from a time that no longer exists, thus not quite a paradox. You’ve managed to trick the universe itself, no small feat. You’re quite unique, I must say,” he laughed, clapping her on the shoulder.

She took a sip of her beer, her mind spinning. “So now what? Am I effectively dead? What happens to me?”

“That’s also a very interesting question. Unlike your friend Kristoff, you have something of a choice to make. You can’t go back to where you came from, because it no longer exists. Your paradox somewhat resolved itself by eliminating your existence, if not your life, though you being a time remnant means that Elsa and Anna do remember you. You could go with those two gentlemen, if you wanted to go to the afterlife. They’d help you decide where you belonged. Or…” he mused, looking at the door to the bar.

“Or what?”

Pabbie whistled for one of the men to come over to the table. The one in the suit sauntered over, his manner as impeccable as his sartorial sense. “What do you think, Lou?” Pabbie asked. “She’s in between.”

“Mmm, so she is. How delightful,” the man Pabbie called Lou said, in what sounded like a posh British accent to Elsa’s ears. He looked her over with a lascivious grin, making Elsa uncomfortable. “Well, I suppose there’s no harm in letting her bounce around if you wanted to, eh Dad? I know you’ve got that list.” He turned to Elsa and stared at her intently. “Tell me, Elsa Beckett, what is it you truly desire?”

Elsa beamed, not hesitating for even a moment to answer the question. “Nothing any more. I saved my sister. I saved her from dying and I put her life on the right track. That’s all I wanted. That’s all I ever wanted.”

Lou stared for a moment longer at Elsa, then turned to Pabbie with a smile. “Well, there you have it. I’ve nothing to offer her, and I’m sure my brother doesn’t either, Dad. Now if you’ll excuse me…” He stood up and went back to his table, rejoining what was apparently his brother and Kristoff.

“Dad?” Elsa looked at Pabbie quizzically.

“Just a nickname. So here’s what else you could do, if you were interested. You’re a free agent, a literal free spirit, Elsa. You’re out of time in the most literal sense. The rules of time don’t apply to you any more. Did you enjoy going back in time and fixing it, putting right what once went wrong?”

“To save Anna, yes,” she nodded, taking a sip of her beer and watching Pabbie warily. Everything about this situation urged her to be cautious - the unusual bar patrons, the time paradox, and the fact that Pabbie was clearly more than just a bartender.

“What if you did that for others? Travel through time and put right other wrongs? Would that be of interest to you?”

Elsa paused. Fixing Anna’s life had given her purpose, given her life meaning. She’d dedicated twenty years just to build the technology to go back in time for the purpose of apologizing to Anna, but had managed instead to avert Anna’s tragic life entirely. She’d atoned for her guilt, for her perceived role in Anna’s original life, and she absolved herself of that burden by saving her sister.

What if… what if she could do that for others? She felt like a race horse that still had a few races left in her, not ready to be put out to pasture. Seeing Anna happy, seeing Anna in love - even if it was with a younger version of her - was worth all the effort and then some. What if she could help fix other people’s lives for the better?

Elsa closed her eyes. What would Anna - the Anna she helped to create - do? In her mind, Anna’s voice echoed enthusiastically the idea of helping others, of being a force for good. She could almost see Anna’s teal eyes sparkling with excitement for her. A chance to do good, to be a force for good in the world.

She nodded, partially to Pabbie and partially to the Anna in her mind. “Al- all right. I’m interested, at least for a little while. What do I have to do?”

Pabbie smiled, taking her empty beer glass. “You’ve done the hard part, Elsa. You freed yourself from your guilt. That was the warning I gave you last time you were here. Guilt was what caused your leaps through time. When you sacrificed yourself, it wasn’t out of guilt, and in that moment you became free.”

He turned to look over the bar. “Your spirit is free, so to continue your journey, just walk out the door, and you’ll figure out what to do next. When you need a break, just think about this place and come back here, all right? I’ve got a cot you can rest on in the break room, and there’s plenty of beer and snacks.” He chuckled jovially. “And you don’t have to watch your health any more, so you can snack on whatever you like.”

“Will… will I ever see Anna again?” she asked, hesitantly.

Pabbie chuckled. “Remember what I said. The rules don’t apply to you any more. You can look in on Anna - and yourself - whenever you like. You won’t be able to talk to her any more, but you can see how she’s doing at any time.”

Elsa stood up from the table, feeling refreshed. All the sorrows and pain she’d suffered felt like they’d drifted away like a snow flurry in a stiff winter breeze once she made her decision. She nodded to Pabbie and walked out the door of the bar, then looked down. Blue lightning started arcing over her body, and she laughed at the sensation as time pulled her away once more.

“Thank you, Anna,” she whispered as she vanished.

* * *

## Author’s Notes

With that, Elsa is now free to be a time traveler in true Quantum Leap style, with no physical body any more and a spirit that can jump from place to place throughout time, unencumbered.

And this chapter contains a nod to another franchise I love. Yes, Pabbie is effectively God, which makes the two gentlemen two of his angels. If you’re a fan of Lucifer, the two gentlemen are Amenadiel and Lucifer - Lou - judging Kristoff’s soul and deciding where he will go.

This concludes the story. Elsa’s now free to move through time and set right the things that went wrong. The still alive sisters are happily married and discovered the truth of what happened.

Special thanks go out to Fishycoffee for being an early beta reader of the story; I started this fic just after Storm of Spirits and it actually languished on the shelf for about 4 months. I was stuck on chapter 3 for the longest time and couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with the story. Once I decided that instead of Elsa just going back and witnessing Anna’s life, she would attempt to change it, the story changed radically and suddenly it began flowing again. I jumped back into it with both feet and ended up using it as my work for NaNoWriMo 2020.

I hope you enjoyed it, found it interesting, found it worth reading. Thank you for being part of the story, for your thoughts and reactions, and if you’d like to talk more about it, join the Discord server below.

* * *

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